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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damianrobertjones - Thursday, January 2, 2014 - link
"I like the new Mac Pro’s chassis a lot. It’s a risk, but one that absolutely must be taken if the desktop is to continue to exist and thrive."Absolute rubbish... Sorry. We simply DO NOT have to change the case. Sure, of course, the option of having a case like this is fantastic but simply changing the case DOES NOT enable this to 'thrive'.
AnnonymousCoward - Sunday, January 5, 2014 - link
Agreedplatinumjsi - Thursday, January 2, 2014 - link
What are you using to monitor the GPU usage? I have been looking for a app for OSX for a while without any joy?hoboville - Thursday, January 2, 2014 - link
Sigh, lots of fanboyism in the comments, without recognition that this is just a slower, more expensive PC, the only difference is that it can run OSX only programs. Here's some hardware facts:This machine is basically a dual-GPU Xeon workstation with 2x 7970 in Crossfire (D700). Nothing special. Ok, so each 7970 has 6 GB of RAM. Well, each 7970 is also underclocked...and the RAM isn't ECC, so if you want one of these workstations for serious GPU compute, you're going to be eating bit errors, and your data is going to be suspect. Real GPGPUs use ECC RAM, period. If ECC doesn't matter, then dual/triple/quad AMD GPUs of any stripe will do you fine. Even better now that R9 290(X) are out, and they have 4 GB of RAM.
What if I need more local storage than 200 GB? Most raw video is bigger than that. So your files are stored on a NAS, but this machine only has gigabit NICs. If you want to take advantage of RAID throughput for massive files, you'll need 10 Gbit. But this machine can't use 10 Gbit NICs, as there's no place to put them.
This workstation, then, isn't for serious compute, those who have big files, and it isn't for those who want to use the most powerful GPUs for rendering / modeling. That belongs to Nvidia, there are plenty of benchmarks out there attesting to that fact. You can't get Nvidia on this workstation, so what then? I guess you buy this machine for Mac-specific applications.
And that's what this machine is for--Mac OS. If you want more power, UNIX/Linux/Windows boxes are where you go (not Apple-restricted Unix either). Are they bigger? Yes. Hotter? Yes. In fashion because small = sexy? Nope. And that's what this comes down to, looks, style, sleekness, and other metrics not relevant to performance. Sure, there's a niche for those who use Mac only software, but what if you want to do more? Apple has convinced people that style and a walled garden of software is more value than function, stop wasting your money and drop OSX!
pmhparis - Thursday, January 2, 2014 - link
Snort, the ignorant NVidia hobo fanboy complains of Mac fanboys...Professionals don't store video projects on internal storage, they use DAS devices like Thunderbolt or USB3 disk enclosures.
Houston1 - Thursday, January 2, 2014 - link
Incorrect.Chirpie - Friday, January 3, 2014 - link
No, it's pretty spot on. Every video environment I've worked in does not keep the project files and assets on the machine. It's a very normal/typical way of doing business with many terabytes worth of files. I'll go one step further though and say that it's not just USB and Thunderbolt but even duplexed gigabit ethernet or optical, or a number of other flavors as well.FunBunny2 - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
Steve was always the best snake oil salesman since Barnum. How Apple can contend that it spends billions and billions of dollars on R&D is baffling. It can't have cost that much to devise a square cornered rectangle, or single cornered Cube. The parts, 99.44% are off the shelf from suppliers.DotFab - Thursday, January 2, 2014 - link
Many thanks for this impressive review of the MacPro 2013!!You treat every point and more I had in mind!
A huge and fine work, I really feel like I know what's the MP 2013 now.
Happy new year to AnandTech and to everyone !
HisDivineOrder - Thursday, January 2, 2014 - link
I love that Anand is discussing his well-known Apple addiction and the subsequent fanboyism he engages in. It is good. Admitting he has a problem means he can perhaps one day overcome it.One day. Today is not the day.
How can anyone in their right mind suggest buying such a limited-expandability computer for anything NOT a low-power HTPC? If you pay this much money, you really ought to be able to easily change out the GPU(s).
When you're so hooked on a company's products you're rubbing them like Gollum rubbing the Ring of Power, I think you've got to stop and take stock.