Mac Pro Upgrade Question

[Ridpath]

Hello All,

This is my first post. I am in the process of upgrading from a MacBook Pro to a Mac Pro to run Vectorworks 2011(Spotlight) with Renderworks. I have the option to really get a "dream machine"...That being said, I do not want to waste money on a tower that has lots of bells and whistles that Vectorworks does not need(or use for that matter)

There's quad core, 8 core 12 core etc....not sure what to buy. The one thing I will make sure of is plenty of RAM but am not sure what else is important.

An help would be much appreciated.

R

[Ridpath]

This is option #1:

# Two 2.4GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon ?Westmere? (8 cores)

# 8GB (4X2GB)

# None

# 1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s hard drive

# None

# None

# None

# ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB

And this is Option #2:

# Two 2.93GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon ?Westmere? (12 cores)

# 8GB (4X2GB)

# None

# 1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s hard drive

# None

# None

# None

# Two ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB

Any feedback would be appreciated

[grant_PD]

Depends on what you do.

Renderings will demand more processing, so more cores there.

Regular VW won't benefit as greatly, although you can have more programs open and not notice as much sluggishness.

I've not tested my new quadro fx graphic card yet, but everything I've heard is that a better graphics card means a better experience. My last card had only 256 mb of RAM, and screen redraws were an issue.

More RAM, why not?

People always overlook a bigger screen. One of the best investments money can buy.

[Ridpath]

Agreed on the monitor.

The biggest reason for the upgrade is because Renderworks takes forever for larger projects and makes my Macbook Pro useless until it is finished. I plan on adding ESP Vision for Mac as well.

I just do not want to spend too much on excessive processor speed and memory if I do not have to.

Thanks for the reply.

RR

[grant_PD]

Just my opinion, are you locked into xeons as opposed to i7's? Xeon's are for servers, and usually have to have more expensive components.

[Ridpath]

Xenons are all Apple has to offer directly....I haven't ventured from the Apple store yet

[Bryan G.]

If money is no object, Mac Pro 2-2.93 6core "Westmere", 24 GB RAM,2-512 Solid States,ATI 5870 1GB with two 27" Cinemas. Don't forget run Lion and get a 1TB external as a backup.

Lots of juice, fast memory and plenty of it.

With the tower you can add what you want if you need more.

[Ridpath]

HA...I'd love to add the 2 Cinema Monitors but that is a definitely a budget breaker. But the reason I posted this thread was to see if buying 24G of RAM makes that much of a difference as opposed to 8G as far as vectorworks/Renderworks is concerned. Otherwise I would just buy the most expensive Mac Pro available. LOL

Honestly, Option 1 fits better into my budget at just under $4k but Option 2 is not out of the question at $6.4k.

Another question that you brought to mind.....ati 5870 MAKE A DIFFERENCE OVER THE 5770?

Thanks for the reply.

RR

[Tobias]

It has been a few years since I bought a computer from Apple, but when I did, the conventional wisdom was to get the tower w/ the processor you wanted from them and all the other bits elsewhere, ie.e ram and hard drives, and possibly graphics card. Save some significant money. But like I say, it's been awhile since I shopped it.

[Kizza]

Ivy Bridge processors come out in April - they will have USB 3 controllers on the chip. I personally wouldn't buy anything Apple now without USB 3. Having said that though, the iMac will probably be the first to get the Ivy Bridge processor.

Apple seem to be dropping the ball with the full workstation option.

[Bryan G.]

yes buy the bones then upgrade as you need. memory from crucial is cheaper and is OEM. 5870 is a better card from what I know and it will allow you to expand to another monitor when needed.

[Bryan G.]

if you can wait for Ivy Bridge then do it. as you can tell I have some older specs but am waiting for the Ivy bridge rollout.

[Bryan G.]

I have 30" which they do not make anymore. 27" are nice but you may find 30"s cheep online, as they are a great long running monitor.

[nick kourtides]

I'm in the same city as the original poster. I'd be happy to run a few tests of rendering time on an 8-core Mac Pro with Spotlight and Renderworks. Mine is an older machine, with a 5770. As you know RW uses multiple cores, and the graphics card should only affect screen draws/Open GL work.

[Assembly]

I think the mac pro is due for an upgrade. The iMac is a better set up. My last two workstations were towers, I thought it better to buy some thing I could configure letter. I got 2x 20 inch monitors thinking these would be kept and the work station replaced.

I have added a couple of hard drives and a little extra memory. But not to the level the tower could handle. 2 years latter and the new 27 iMac would trump my tower with ease.

Vector works does not use multi processors yet. So I'd say your best to get the high end iMac.

[Kizza]

Apple seem to be dropping the ball with the full workstation option.

thereby giving birth to the rise of the hackintosh...

Edited January 10, 2012 by Kizza

[Bryan G.]

Definitely the iMac is a great solution. As for design and rendering the iMac loaded is great. If you are a heavy user, lots of 3D, and usage of other software while in VW go with the tower. I have the tower because I got rid of my server (i am now using the old server) in a business consolidation. If I were buying new I would load up an iMac, more bang for the buck!

[Kizza]

only shortcoming with the imac is the gloss screen.

I bought one only to return it because I have a mirrored wardrobe behind my desk which reflects the light from the window in front of my desk. The glare was too distracting for me. I wasn't going to renovate my office either to accommodate it - I'm not that much of a fanboy.

Give us an anti glare option and USB 3 and surely one would be sitting on my desk!!

[Bryan G.]

good point, I do like my matte finish(anti glare)

[Chris D]

We upgraded three of our machines to fairly high spec Mac Pros yesterday....big spend. New spec in my signature. We're intending to run a BIM trial with these machines.

What I think I've learned after a day with them is as follows:

- Clock speed is all important. The 3.2GHz makes a difference, but nothing can make bloody VW use more than one core, even when it's thrashing around for three minutes trying to do a hidden line render. So even our conservative quad core purchase seems like overkill. Activity Monitor shows up to 80 threads, all trying to still use one core while leaving the other three idle.

- RAM is similarly not being used beyond 4GB. We went for 24GB (Kingston, not Apple), but VW refuses to make use of it.

- Virtual Memory seems to be a bottleneck. We decided to skip the SSD option but I think this was a mistake. With several applications open the VM size quickly exceeds 150GB. I think this is being written to the HDD (7200rpm) and might be slowing VW down. A 256GB SSD would maybe speed up system responsiveness somewhat which might help VW.

Certainly we're disappointed that these very expensive machines have simply not wowed us in the way we hoped. For our standard 2D workflow they are lightning fast, but we bought them for BIM and they're not really cutting the mustard.

EDIT:

Forgot to mention the graphics card. The Radeon HD5870 is pretty darn fast for Open GL renders.

EDIT 2:

Also forgot to say we're testing a pre-built very large BIM file that somebody kindly gave us. With all the references it's a 2GB project file, and it's navigating these project files that is proving more sluggish than we hoped.

Edited January 17, 2012 by Chris D

[Bryan G.]

Chris,

I was of the understanding that Renderworks uses multiple cores. As for the SSD I have witnessed its use in other machines and is really fast. Its an option you can move to in the future (that is my plan). Interesting on the RAM though. I have 6GB right now and have been experiencing render issues with movie walk throughs (shuts down with 8 med views). I do not know if this is RAM or something else yet.

Keep me posted on what you find with your machines. It may move my mindset on computer power. Although for other software more is better(Photoshop, Aperture, Illustrator).

Thanks for the post.

[Bryan G.]

Chris, I just noticed your on 2008. is that correct? would a switch to 2012 help? that last question was directed at anyone.

[Bruce Kieffer]

My thought is to buy a 27" iMac with the 3.4GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7, and the AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2GB GDDR5. You'll need more RAM (Crucial), and I would get the largest HD possible, maybe even an SSD. I like the glossy screen. I get an occasional reflection, but you get use to that (at least I did). Here's my reasoning: This iMac costs you $2299 including the monitor. Much lower initial cost compared to $4k or $6.4k (ouch!). Computers are essentially obsolete the day you buy them. You'll still be using your Mac Pro six years from now because you'll be trying to max your investment. It will be a serious dog then. You can buy a new iMac every two or three years and stay current, and very soon they will be faster than the Mac Pro you buy today. If you're are good at selling used computers, then you can stretch the value out more years, and continue to buy faster/better iMacs. FYI, reselling an iMac is easy on Craig's List, I don't think there's much of a market for used Mac Pros. Being able to keep AppleCare continuous is another consideration.

[Chris D]

Chris, I just noticed your on 2008. is that correct? would a switch to 2012 help?

2008 for 2D work (the other 30 odd users in the office didn't get an upgrade)

2012 for the BIM trial..

[Chris D]

My thought is to buy a 27" iMac with the 3.4GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7

We have plenty of experience with iMacs and it's mostly bad. We use our machines with netrender overnight and we hammer them all day. They can't cope with heavy use and the motherboards eventually fry (the cost of an iMac motherboard + fitting is more than a new machine). i5s and i7s are also not as robust for pro use as Xeons, that's why there are two chip lines. The graphics card options on the iMacs are also very limited.