The Mac Pro Review (Late 2013)
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 31, 2013 3:18 PM ESTGaming Performance
As I mentioned earlier, under OS X games have to specifically be written to use both GPUs in the new Mac Pro. Under Windows however it's just a matter of enabling CrossFire X. I ran the new Mac Pro with dual FirePro D700s through a few of Ryan's 2014 GPU test suite games. The key comparison here is AMD's Radeon R9 280X CF. I've put all of the relevent information about the differences between the GPUs in the table below:
| Mac Pro (Late 2013) GPU Comparison | ||||||
| AMD Radeon R9 280X | AMD FirePro D700 | |||||
| SPs | 2048 | 2048 | ||||
| GPU Clock (base) | 850MHz | 650MHz | ||||
| GPU Clock (boost) | 1000MHz | 850MHz | ||||
| Single Precision GFLOPS | 4096 GFLOPS | 3481 GFLOPS | ||||
| Texture Units | 128 | 128 | ||||
| ROPs | 32 | 32 | ||||
| Transistor Count | 4.3 Billion | 4.3 Billion | ||||
| Memory Interface | 384-bit GDDR5 | 384-bit GDDR5 | ||||
| Memory Datarate | 6000MHz | 5480MHz | ||||
| Peak GPU Memory Bandwidth | 288 GB/s | 264 GB/s | ||||
| GPU Memory | 3GB | 6GB | ||||
Depending on thermal conditions the 280X can be as little as 17% faster than the D700 or as much as 30% faster, assuming it's not memory bandwidth limited. In the case of a memory bandwidth limited scenario the gap can shrink to 9%.
All of the results below are using the latest Radeon WHQL drivers at the time of publication (13-12_win7_win8_64_dd_ccc_whql.exe) running 64-bit Windows 8.1. Keep in mind that the comparison cards are all run on our 2014 GPU testbed, which is a 6-core Ivy Bridge E (i7-4960X) running at 4.2GHz. In other words, the other cards will have a definite CPU performance advantage (20 - 30% depending on the number of active cores).
You'll notice that I didn't run anything at 4K for these tests. Remember CrossFire at 4K is still broken on everything but the latest GCN 1.1 hardware from AMD.
Battlefield 3 starts out telling the story I expected to see. A pair of 280Xes ends up being 16% faster than the dual FirePro D700 setup in the Mac Pro. You really start to get an idea of where the Mac Pro's high-end GPU configuration really lands.
Bioshock ends up at the extreme end of what we'd expect to see between the 280X and D700. I tossed in a score from Bioshock under OS X, which obviously doesn't have CF working and ends up at less than half of the performance of the D700. If you're going to do any heavy 3D gaming, you'll want to do it under Windows still.
Not all games will scale well across multiple GPUs: Company of Heroes 2 is one of them. There's no performance uplift from having two 280Xes and thus the D700 performs like a slower single GPU R9 280X.
Metro is the one outlier in our test suite. Although CrossFire is clearly working under Windows, under Metro the D700 behaves as if it wasn't. I'm not sure what's going on here, but this does serve as a reminder that relying on multi-GPU setups to increase performance does come with a handful of these weird cases - particularly if you're using non-standard GPU configurations.
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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.