Blender Render performance on 2014 New Mac Pro?

I can’t seem to find any discussion ANYWHERE of how Blender 2.69 runs on the newest cylindrical Mac Pro.

Does anybody know how it performs?

Is any sort of retrofitting of NVIDIA/Cuda cards into it
—via some sort of “Thunderbolt” external PCIe expansion chassis???)

The ongoing conflict between OpenCL and OpenGL seems to be continuing…
I’ve got an AMD/ATI card in my box, and so I have only CPU rendering…
Slooooow (and only 1GB VRAM…just barely hobbles along. if “particle systems” or “physics” are in use…)
—My mid-2010 Mac Pro is feeling VERY anemic, at this point… :frowning:

Please discuss, or speculate…

It likely performs similar to an equivalent processor running on Linux.

Is any sort of retrofitting of NVIDIA/Cuda cards into it
—via some sort of “Thunderbolt” external PCIe expansion chassis???)

Yes, those should work.

I’ve got an AMD/ATI card in my box, and so I have only CPU rendering…

Maybe OpenCL ends up working properly at some point, that would of course be very good.

In any case: You don’t really have a choice. If you want to stay a Mac Pro user, you need to buy that thing. You will be paying a premium for performance, no matter what.

I don’t know how it performs but here is a review unfortunately the specs don’t appear to be the greatest (for the price), check for yourself here: http://reviews.cnet.com/apple-mac-pro/
The CPU (3.7ghz) isn’t groundbreaking and with 4 cores matches my i5 processor (3.8ghz) so nothing special there.
12gb ram is average i have 16gb for simulation purposes
The graphics are a little bit more impressive but still can’t compare with dual gtx 780 gpu’s (again considering the price)
hard drive space 256gb on ssd, again not too impressed especially considering the price, i have 128gb ssd for OS and 1tb (hdd) for baking simulations and other bits and pieces.

apple computers are made up of laptop components, due to their thin size. You pay for your computer and then an extra $1000 for the apple logo and smooth edges.
My custom Pc cost me around $1600, nearly half the price of the new mac pro and is a year old, half if not more of my components can compare with the mac components (graphics being the only section my PC can’t match).
You can’t customize macs, their components are soldered to the MOBO and can’t be replaced or exchanged (at least the graphics chips are)

Bottom line: Not worth your money (if you have a limited budget), your stuck on OpenCL, extremely limited customizability (you can’t add more space). Won’t work as well as a custom pc / gaming build for the same price in blender.

(if i have made any mistakes correct me, i have nothing against apple its just their products aren’t worth what you pay.)

I was quite disappointed that the new Apple Mac Pro is not nVidia based. I think they will lose a lot of new customers that are on the fence because of that. It does seem overpriced when you compare the components but it claims to be the 5th fastest computer in the world.

From what I read in various forums I get the impression that 3D artists may not be the main target audience for this machine - at least as far as rendering is concerned (no CUDA support, no dual CPU setups, Xeons instead of i7s), but rather motion graphics generalists and video editors, especially those using FCPX.

What makes the new Mac Pro special (apart from the form factor) is the phenomenal memory throughput. Even the SSDs are not standard SATA connected, but via a special PCIe connector, which Apple claims to offer substantially more bandwidth. There are some videos on YouTube showing the new Mac Pro editing 4K video with various effects without noticeable lag - undoubtably impressive. And the guys from The Foundry had a chance to test run early builds of the new Mac Pro with Mari and said that this was the fastest off-the-shelf machine they ever worked with.

For Blender, however, I’m pretty sure you can build better suited machines for a fraction of the cost.

Macs will never be as cheap as a box you build yourself. No reason to even debate about that. However, at least one site (I think are technica maybe?) has posted that they compared the mac pro innards to other equivalently specced workstations from Dell, HP, etc and found that the new Mac Pro is actually very price competitive with them. It’s easy to overlook that the innards of the new mac pro are Xeons, top-specced ATI FirePro cards, the fastest RAM out there and pci-express SSD (not to mention 6 thunderbolt 2.0 ports) which are all extremely expensive components. We’re not talking Radeons and i7 chips here. You can debate the cost-effectiveness of those components, but for what’s in there, the cost isn’t too outrageous.

I’m personally VERY disappointed that you can’t upgrade the GPUs. But I can console myself with the knowledge that it will be a very long while before a pair of top end FirePros are no longer useful. The CPU, on the other hand, is apparently easily upgraded.

I also wish they would have gone with NVIDIA. CUDA is just a better more mature platform than OpenCL. However, because of apple’s push for OpenCL over CUDA (which is actually very understandable), it’s looking like we will be seeing some strong OpenCL improvements in the (hopefully) near future. I guess Cycles is already building and working on OpenCL now on OS X. Apparently buggy and slow, but it’s a start.

In general, I personally would have preferred a traditional chassis with user-accessable PCI-Express slots. But Apple’s gonna Apple. And I can’t deny my frothing geek demand for this new machine. :slight_smile:

Thanks for the comment–I’m going to HAVE to get a “PC Box”, to replace this mid-2010-Mac"Pro" (ironic, bitter quotes!) due to it’s VERY underwhelming graphics performance… Day-to-day work is fine, Photoshop is fine Graphics Playback (videos) fine but ANY “constructive” work with ANY three-dee software I’ve tried is nearly hopeless, unless I’m running on “solid” or “wireframe” mode ONLY… Load any textures on a “simple” scene, or try to use Particles, or Physic…and Oops! (and remember children, sometimes “The Oops Factor” can KILL You!™ :no:

A horrible thought just occurred to me, abandoning Mac means I’ll have to come up with a new “Avatar” logo for postings and the “SIG” for my email! :frowning:

I agree with your reply! I’d like to see a SPECIFIC listing of those “fastest machines” No. 1–4, but Apple nearly always “play coy” with sharing any definitive/comparable/SPECIFIC data, that would allow consumers to make a REAL “informed purchase decision”! At least that been my long-term experience over THIRTY years of being a (heretofore) loyal Mac user and consultant! Apple’s been “cheaping out” on many of it’s components over the last 10 years (all of it’s trace-wires on the motherboard USED to be 24 carat GOLD, but are now aluminium–and aluminium doesn’t do very well in high-freq. RF environment conditions—starts to grow molecular “spines” that can lead to plasma arcing… (think “ultra tiny atomic bomb” kinda’ ) and there goes your motherboard. Add in “unibody” construction–everything welded to the motherboard, or built up in lamination layers (good luck attempting to replace your laptop’s keyboard!–also made of “junk” materials and non-ALPS (high-end “clicky”) key-switches that APPLE used to use… In overall, long-term consumer “usability” Apple’s score has been slipping badly over the past decade! <sigh>:mad:

Apple using cheaper parts may be true, but holy shit their build quality is still light years ahead of the competition.

Also, I’m not sure what kind of problems your having with performance on a 2010 mac pro. I have a 2009 8-core xeon and it’s still faster at rendering in cycles compared to new 4-core i7 chip. Not bad for a 5 year old machine. I also dropped in a Geforce GTX 660 with 3 gigs of DDR5 memory into it (a standard pc card I picked up off of newegg) and it worked out-of-the-box and performs excellently in all my 3d apps including blender.

Your mileage may vary, I suppose. I have found that blender on the pc runs poorly compared to the Linux/mac versions, and windows is… windows. You sure can build a cheap box though! Good price/performance ratio. Can’t ever argue with that! :slight_smile:

EDIT: Ok, I re-read your previous posts and your speed issue stems from AMD gpu rendering not being supported in blender. Yeah, at the moment, the new mac pro won’t help there. HOWEVER, openCL rendering in Blender is moving forward little by little, especially on OSX. If it ever gets to a fully supported, stable state, it’s likely the new mac pro will SCREAM! Until that happens, however, it’s cpu rendering only, unfortunately.

Hi Fahr…

“EDIT: Ok, I re-read your previous posts and your speed issue stems from AMD gpu rendering not being supported in blender. Yeah, at the moment, the new mac pro won’t help there. HOWEVER, openCL rendering in Blender is moving forward little by little, especially on OSX. If it ever gets to a fully supported, stable state, it’s likely the new mac pro will SCREAM! Until that happens, however, it’s cpu rendering only, unfortunately.”

I agree with you almost entirely. However “the future isn’t happening fast enough” in regards to OpenCL support, and APPLE is metaphorically tightening the thumbscrews so that it’s becoming MUCH harder to escape from their “Walled Garden” approach to computing. Their Bat, their Ball, and their Backyard, and their Rules. “

Add that into the very poor (so far?) price-performance ratio, and (now) total lack of any backward compatibility, and totally limited “3rd party support” (Adobe, NVIDIA, Autodesk) and I would think you’d also agree “There are a few large elephants in this room\garden! “

IF, and granted its a big IF… Adobe were to withdraw support for the Apple platform (and they’ve been in a “pissing contest” for the past decade!)) that would pretty much kill the Mac platform for a majority of graphic artists. Although some video editors wouldn’t mind that at all I suppose.

I’m visually handicapped, so the ongoing trend toward “smaller” GUI’s is killing my ability to use the Mac—I do not dare to upgrade past “Snow Leopard” OSX 10.6.8, as all newer versions of OSX do not run,—or run horribly slowly on my Mac.

When (not “if”) my Mac hardware fails I will have to make a standing jump to whatever they’re offering by then----IF I can see where the: “push button to upgrade system and disavow ALL of your expensive 3rd party apps.” button is! It used to be that “Form follows Function”… but APPLE has recoined that, it seems, to “Form follow our version of Stylish” Big Brother has Spoken!….

So, I’m trying to assemble a situation where I can afford to step sideways onto (I suppose) a dual-boot system, Win.7 plus the best form of Linux-for-Blender, and let the chips fall where they may. I only hope Linux has a wide variety of similarly-functioned apps that I’ve been using to help with finding/seeing the user-interface! I haven’t found anybody in Vancouver using Linux, willing to show it to me!

I can only hope that-sooner rather than later-Blender optimizes their use(?) of OpenCL for AMD (Apple) graphics cards. I must go check my lotto ticket now, to see if I can “afford” a BOXX workstation! :yes:

I’ve been hobbling along with an old 3,1 Mac Pro for a while now (though still managing to get work done on it fairly nicely). 2014 MP out of the question for me. I’m just whacking in a GTX 660 3GB card for a couple hundred bucks and I reckon that’ll do me for a while.

Also, I’m not sure what kind of problems your having with performance on a 2010 mac pro. I have a 2009 8-core xeon and it’s still faster at rendering in cycles compared to new 4-core i7 chip. Not bad for a 5 year old machine

he he
same machine here. (24 GB RAM)
No issues at all. Very fast. Faster than any i7.

It depends what “vintage” of MacPro you have… OLDER ones (2008, 2009) apparently DO have somewhat affordable(?) options for NVIDIA cards. Mid-2010 has NO options, and is only “slightly” compatible with OSX 10.7,10.8, or 10.9…… Mine just freezes solid when I try to install 10.7 on it, and when I can get it running, with great difficulty—it’s a slow as molasses, very unstable and doesnt’ run ANY of my major third-party apps (Adobe CS 5. just purchased)…. NO NVIDIA card options whatsoever! (different sort of electrical hook-up required with a very rare and impossible-to-find hybrid power-cable!). So I’m busted, unless I switch to a PC box….

Wow, had no idea there were so many issues with the 2010 models.

It would be nice to see how it works now cycles (well partially) in linux and windows to see if the latest driver or upgrade could walk into a new mac pro. I think it would be a monster largely


Seria bueno ver como ahora que cycles funciona ( parcialmente bien) en linux y en windows ver si el ultimo controlador o actualizacion pudiera andar en una nueva mac pro. Creo que seria un monstruo en gran parte,

I have a 2009 8-core xeon and it’s still faster at rendering in cycles compared to new 4-core i7 chip.

Any chance you could post a CPU rendering time of theMike Pan benchmark? I just wonder how much faster it is compared to the new Mac Mini I just got (which is my first 8 core machine).

I’m in a very similar boat, have you considered the Hackintosh route