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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wallysb01 - Friday, January 3, 2014 - link
Actually, you can upgrade the CPU. What you can’t do is replace the monitor.Liquidmark - Friday, January 3, 2014 - link
You can attach external monitors to the iMac.Liquidmark - Friday, January 3, 2014 - link
"The problem with saying Apple's pricing isn't out of touch with reality is that you can't only compare this to high end workstation's from other companies..."This is a workstation. It has workstation components and is formally classified as such, so you kinda have to compare it to *gasp* OTHER workstations and match their spec as closely as possible to see if the price of the Mac Pro is reasonable or not. Anand is absolutely correct in comparing this to a HP Z420 which is HP's mid-range workstation right now.
"this is Apple's only desktop-ish device."
Ever heard of the Mac Mini?
"Apple doesn't provide options for people who want a high end notebook or desktop for normal use.."
Ever heard of the Macbook Pro or iMac?
You can't discount the fact that the Mac Pro has Xeons under the hood just because you don't like the other options Apple offers. If the Mac Pro has Xeons under the hood, then you have to factor that into the price of the device. You don't get to ignore the engine in a Bently to claim that a Bently is thus overpriced when compared to a Toyota Corolla. You don't get to say that it should have an engine from a Toyota Corolla and that theuy shouldn't have the luxury features and hand-crafted attention to detail that come with a bently. If you want a Toyota corolla, go buy a Toyota Corolla. If you want a Dodge viper, go buy that. Don't tell Bently to make a Toyota Corolla or a Dodge viper and don't expect to buy a bently at the cost of a toyota corolla or dodge viper either because you seem to dismiss the facts that there are differences between the three.
"it's at least 2x as expensive as it should be for it's base unit"
Not according to actual price comparisons it isn't..
Bobs_Your_Uncle - Thursday, January 2, 2014 - link
I'm still wondering how that Nokia Lumia 1020 review is coming along !?p51mustang6 - Thursday, January 2, 2014 - link
You should really do research, just a little, prior to making a review like this, you make a bold statement saying how the Mac Pro is so great and for so cheap, yet you compared it to two companies far from known for making anything professional. Try comparing the Mac Pro to The Origin Genesis Pro-X2 from Origin PC. It starts out with considerably higher specs with a LOWER price tag. They also offer up to dual Intel Xeon E5-2697 Dodeca-core processors (that's 12 cores each CPU for those of you who couldn't handle that) for a total of 24 cores (or twice that of the Mac Pro), up to dual 12GB NVIDIA Quadro K6000s (Apple doesn't even offer anything even closely comparable lol), up to 256GB of RAM (Apple offers up to 64GB), up to 4TB of SSD storage (compared to Apple's 1TB, granted PCI), comes standard with liquid cooling (Apple does not offer), up to an additional 12GB NVIDIA Tesla K40 (once again Apple offers nothing of the sort), Origin comes with one year warranty upgradable to 3 years but also comes standard with LIFETIME support with 24/7 United States based support (I wonder where Apple's support that you get 90 days of is based...lol) The starting price of the Origin is $3,712 compared to $3,999 of the Mac Pro which does not come with dual processors. The trash can is a complete rip off which requires you to go out and use their thunderbolt ports in order to do any real upgrading so you will have random things sitting on your desk, the Origin perhaps bigger, but at least all the goods will always be inside of it. Instead of spending all their time trying to make a computer a cylinder maybe Apple should have tried to compete with the real heavy hitters such as Origin PC.Louiek - Thursday, January 2, 2014 - link
Hi, I am currently myself trying to compare a maxed out mac pro ~ $10k CAD with other OEM workstations of similar spec. I looked into origin but I can't seem to build a similar spec'd (i.e. single Xeon E5-2697v2 etc) that will cost under $11k CAD. Is there something I am missing as your comment leads me to believe that I can build a cheaper PC with origins with similar specs.Liquidmark - Friday, January 3, 2014 - link
You can't the Origin machine only offers extreeeeme options that are ideal for gaming with neon lights. Its solution to things is to throw more cores at it and throw more ram at it even though the ram is slower...stingerman - Thursday, January 2, 2014 - link
Sorry dude, triedto configure a comparable system and it costs more than the Mac Pro...Liquidmark - Friday, January 3, 2014 - link
Ok, I'll bite...Mac Pro:
2.7GHz 12-core with 30MB of L3 cache
32GB (4x8GB) of 1866MHz DDR3 ECC
256GB PCIe-based flash storage
Dual AMD FirePro D700 GPUs with 6GB of GDDR5 VRAM each
User's Guide (English)
$8000 and weighs roughly 11 pounds
GENESIS Pro-X2
ASUS Z9PE-D8 WS
Dual ORIGIN FROSTBYTE 120 Sealed Liquid Cooling Systems
Dual Intel XEON E5-2630 v2 Hex-Core 2.6GHz (3.1GHz Turbo) 15MB Cache (That's 12 cores at a lower clock than the Mac Pro build)
1000 Watt Corsair RM1000
Dual 6GB NVIDIA Quadro 6000 (Non-SLI)
32GB Kingston ECC 1600MHz (4x8GB)
Genuine MS Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit Edition
250GB Samsung 840 Evo Series
ASUS 24X CD/DVD Burner
On Board Audio
Onboard Network Port
ORIGIN Wooden Crate Armor
1 Year Part Replacement and 45 Day Free Shipping Warranty with Lifetime Labor/24-7 Support
ORIGIN Recovery USB3.0 Flash Drive
ORIGIN PC G8 T-Shirt XL
Microsoft Internet Explorer
$11,017 and weighs over 70 pounds.
Now, before anyone says anything, the tee shirt was free and the water cooling was the only offer plus they give a free games offer that I didn't take. Tho I probably should since apparently workstations are all about pro gaming, neon lights and being extreeeeeme.
Liquidmark - Friday, January 3, 2014 - link
Also, if anyone wants to argue that you can get dual 12-core on the origin machine, I'll simply point out that, at spec, I'd almost be able to buy two 12 core Mac Pros. Just saying.