New Mac Pros which video card? any test results?

[Ido Karilla]

Anyone tested allready video cards on the new mac pros?

Redalert - Redcine - fcp ... conclusions?

[Curran Giddens]

My machine should be here tomorrow afternoon. Is there any standard for testing?

[Adrian T.]

My machine arrived today:
2 x 3.2 GHz Quad, 4 x 2 GB, ATI Radeon HD 2600

Didn't do much testing yet, but at first glance:
Redcine performance seems ok as far as I can tell.

But QuickTime performance is terrible. Couldn't run any proxy file of Jim's two original R3D clips without stutter and/or bad performance. And no, I haven't updated to QT 7.4 yet.

Look at this 256 x 144 proxy and the CPU load to play it:
http://www.reduser.net/forum/uploaded/673_1200528863.png

In comparison, this is the CPU load when playing a 1080P H.264 Apple trailer:
http://www.reduser.net/forum/uploaded/673_1200528895.png

But I'm absolutely positive that this will be sorted out by our RED elves! :innocent:

[Bill Goehring]

Boy, you've got MY interest!

I'm due to get my camera early in the next wave and am holding off on my MacPro order until I can get some info on video card performance and driver updates. It sure would be nice if Apple cleaned up their QT problems, too.

[Rob Lohman]

Do not update to QT 7.4 yet... there's some issues there! Leopard also seems to have slowed us down a bit. We need some time to dig into what's going on exactly.

[Adrian T.]

Do not update to QT 7.4 yet... there's some issues there! Leopard also seems to have slowed us down a bit. We need some time to dig into what's going on exactly.

As I said, I didn't upgrade. The bad performance from above was with QuickTime 7.3! :waaa:

[Rob Lohman]

That's odd..... I'll re-read this thread in more detail this afternoon

Thanks,

[Blair S. Paulsen]

About to get a new MacPro so I have some questions:

I understand that Leopard and QT 7.4 change the landscape. I am assuming that RED will optimize RedCine for the newer OS and QT implementations as quickly as they can manage. If that is true then the issues I see are:

My first question is for Rob - do you still advise using ATI cards instead of nVidia due to the better drivers for Mac?

If ATI is the better choice is there potential for RedCine to take advantage of multiple GPUs (presumably the 2600s)? My hope is that one of the cards can drive the display(s) and the other(s) can crunch RedCode. Am I nuts?

[BASSAM MSSALATIE]

hope answers will be coming soon from Rob.. we need to decied ..:umm:

[Curran Giddens]

My machine arrived today:
2 x 3.2 GHz Quad, 4 x 2 GB, ATI Radeon HD 2600

Big, I have the same machine (except only 2GB RAM at the moment). If there is a test you want me to duplicate, just let me know.

[Bruce Allen]

If ATI is the better choice is there potential for RedCine to take advantage of multiple GPUs (presumably the 2600s)? My hope is that one of the cards can drive the display(s) and the other(s) can crunch RedCode. Am I nuts?

Blair, great reasoning, except I think you underestimate the phenomenal slowness of the 2600 relative to other current GPUs.

A multi-2600 solution may be workable in the short term (because of lack of Apple drivers for faster cards) but buying two of the darn things is kinda sad! Like buying two G4s or something when there are Core 2s available... Apple really hosed you guys (and Red) with their cheesy graphics card / driver options, sorry.

Hopefully Apple will either release decent ATI graphics cards or write decent nVidia drivers rather than make the Red people waste time optimizing for a dual 2600 setup that maybe 10 people who hate PCs are going to buy before Apple comes to their senses and fixes their product line up?

EDIT: If I were you and absolutely had to buy right now, yes, I'd go for your 2600 setup because it's more likely to work than the nVidia one. Or just get a cheap PC for the RedCode crunching? Best would be to wait for word from Red, though?

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

[Adrian T.]

Big, I have the same machine (except only 2GB RAM at the moment). If there is a test you want me to duplicate, just let me know.

Are you also still on QuickTime 7.3?

Then try to run the "A001_C006_071102_P.mov" in QuickTime player. Maybe you also want to monitor the CPU load as I did (see post #3).

I wonder if you get the same results.

[Curran Giddens]

Yup. Same results.

http://img251.imageshack.us/img251/540/qt73dw8.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Note: I haven't installed QT PRO yet. This is just regular QT 7.3

[Adrian T.]

Thanks Curran.

I have PRO. But I don't think it makes any difference regarding performance.

I suppose Rob will fix that soon. The QuickTimes run much smoother on my MacBook Pro 2.16 GHz Core Duo.

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Thanks for the feedback Bruce. I am more than a little disappointed at the incremental upgrade in the MacPros. Where is my kick ass graphics card? Where is my eSATA port(s)? Where are the new LED backlit higher res displays?

I would get a PC just for crunching RedCode but I really like being able to do everything on the same machine that runs FCP. The transfer time penalty combined with dragging two towers around is not too appealing.

[Gunleik Groven]

Transfer time penality is very solveable.
Prores encoding is not.

gunleik

[Ido Karilla]

Hi Rob, I know you are very busy this days, sorry about the extra presure.
Meny pepole after being inspierd by Red decided to go the FCP way and ordered the new mac pros. From this forums it seems to me that you are the one that can give us some solid answers about the right configuration to allow Redalert and Redcine to work on this new mac pros.
If there are no answers yet could you explain who is working on the allready known problems (Red/Apple) and what is the expected end result.

Thank you very much.

[Bruce Allen]

Blair, I totally agree! One day Apple will come to their senses! NAB 2009?


Hi Rob, I know you are very busy this days, sorry about the extra presure.
Meny pepole after being inspierd by Red decided to go the FCP way and ordered the new mac pros. From this forums it seems to me that you are the one that can give us some solid answers about the right configuration to allow Redalert and Redcine to work on this new mac pros.
If there are no answers yet could you explain who is working on the allready known problems (Red/Apple) and what is the expected end result.

Thank you very much.

Since Rob is probably busy, here's my guess: Red is frantically working on it now.

My experience writing OpenGL graphics software was that nothing worked quite as specified. You can write textbook perfect code - it won't work. You end up going step by step through your code, finding out how to hack it so that it performs properly with a given hardware / software setup.

Now Apple has hit Red with TWO new generations of graphics cards (a slow next-gen ATI card and a medium-speed next-gen nVidia card), plus a new version of Quicktime.

EDIT: well, the 2600 was in the iMac, wasn't it? And I forgot about the new 10.5 Mac OS version too...

Red now needs to go through their code and figure out what the new "gotchas" are. Also, some of the hacks they did to make everything work with the old generation of hardware / software might be hurting things on the new Macs.

Add to this the new OS version and basically it's a big pain in the neck.

In terms of time estimates, they are difficult to give. Maybe there is only one thing that needs to be changed to make everything work, maybe they are a hundred.

All you do as a programmer is start working out which parts of your code execute correctly on the new hardware / software combo, then get to work fixing the parts that don't. When everything works, you stop and celebrate ;)

Bruce Allen
213.675.1155
boacinema@gmail.com
www.boacinema.com

[Hrvoje Simic]

I sure hope those 8800's turn out to be RedCine friendly...

I somewhat disagree that it's a medium speed graphics card Bruce, based on the tests I have seen, but I do wish I had better GPU options (other than $2850 Quadro).

[Jeff Kilgroe]

The 8800GT would be upper mid-level in the Win/Lin world. A fine choice of card and Apple isn't over-charging for the upgrade. Too bad they don't have the GTX cards or true SLI support. I ordered my new system with the 8800GT card and hopefully it doesn't take the full 5 weeks. But I went with that because it's the best card choice for the money and will outperform that ATI 2600 in apps like Maya, Modo, etc.. I'm sure Apple and nVidia will work to get those few sluggish driver functions fixed up at some point and hopefully sooner than later. I also intend to run Windows on this box too, so the 8800GT is a great choice for that too.

[Blair S. Paulsen]

The elephant in the living room in this discussion is not knowing which GPU options are first up in RED's coding efforts. Talking Mac side only for the moment; after they take on whatever issues Leopard and QT 7.4 have spawned will they optimize for ATI since it offers better drivers on the Mac or will they chase the greater horsepower of the nVidia GPUs.

• PURE SPECULATION FOLLOWS •

Perhaps this is all moot, maybe the only way to get the kind of processing speeds we want is dedicated hardware aimed at RedCode. AJA sure looks like the obvious suspect - anyone interested in a RED/KONA card with hardware acceleration for RedCode and the ability to drive a 4K display?

The Red Leader has already teased us with a 4K delivery system and 4K projectors.

I wonder how locked down RedCode has to be before anyone can design ASICs and drivers? What will RED do in house and what will they pass off to their partners?

From what I understand the Scratch MaxiCube is packed full of fast GPUs that apparently use massive parallel processing to get the job done (Lucas, please correct me here if I have this wrong). Perhaps an outboard chassis for the Mac packed with GPUs could accomplish something similar? Without the awesome Scratch color grading tool of course.

Ultimately it makes more sense to have a specialized solution rather than just getting a bigger hammer. Whatever the answer, the desire to turn RedCode into a deliverable format quickly exists and some vendor will fill that void.

Looking forward to NAB yet... :innocent:

[Charles Adams]

Hey Blair, so are you waiting until NAB to purchase a Mac? I think you are on to something with the dedicated hardware. But for those who would like a solution now, would you recommend against the Nvidia?

[Charles Adams]

Check out Barefeat's recommendation (http://www.barefeats.com/york2.html) for a graphics card on the new Mac Pros. Not entirely applicable for our situation with Red of course but something to consider...

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I totally agree with Barefeat's assessment. The 8800GT is the way to go. I'm still waiting for answers from Rob or someone at RED about how the various cards will perform. I have a hard time believing that the ATI 2600 will be better than the 8800GT for anything, even REDCINE.

I'm seriously thinking of canceling my Mac Pro order though and toughing it out until NAB just to see what all the options will be. Rather than dropping $7500 on a Mac Pro now, only to find out I'll be replacing a video card or will want the quad-link FC card instead of the RAID card or whatnot.

[Arnaud Paris]

Well don't count on it too much, my money would go right now on the 8800GT (or whenever it becomes actually 'shippable') cause Apple does not usually make changes that fast to its graphic card options... sorry
Arno
www.locared.com

[Charles Adams]

I agree as well, NAB would be great if we could wait until then. However, for those who have their cameras now and the opportunity to make returns on their investment with Red there is not much choice on the Apple side but to choose a card and run with it. I am leaning towards Nvidia myself.

Jeff, your Red number might be just right by way of 3rd party product support, software and hardware. Seems like there are still a lot of products coming down the pipeline, which should work in your favor by the time your Red is out.

[Christian Berg]

As I understand it Apple is about to release a softwareupdate for Leopard that has a seperate Graphics update. I hope this will help a lot on the nVidia cards.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Yeah, if you can't wait, you can't wait...

I just checked my Mac Pro order and Apple is now saying it will ship on or before Feb 15th. I'm somewhat tempted to cancel, but I think I'm just going to go ahead and let them ship it.

I ordered the 3.2GHz CPU option, 8800GT, and RAID card. I left the RAM and HDD at the stock 2GB and 320GB options. I will swap the RAM for 16GB and install 4x1TB HDDs on my own.

Charles, I think you're right about my RED #. I was always bummed out being clear out at the #1110 mark. But as events have unfolded, I've become a lot happier with my place in line. Almost prefer it over what I could've had if didn't procrastinate on sending in my reservation form the first round. :)

[Charles Adams]

Looking foward to any graphics update Apple can provide on the software end, Christian. Didn't see this announced yet but will keep my eye open.

Hey Jeff, I don't actually have a Red myself but know a couple owners who've already received theirs and that is exactly the issue they are running into. On one hand they have their cameras early and are having a great time testing it out. On the other, they are waiting for this part, buying interim solutions, using workarounds, etc as more support comes up to speed.

For example, where is the Redrock mattebox? Sure, with money, one can solve lots of issues, but if you also want to be budget minded yet be able to take on clients now you are going to have to come up with stop gap solutions. Then there's the question of which graphics card for Apple, whether Cineform soon, alternate battery solution (thankfully, Actioncam is on it), Element Technica's dovetail for the 1030, and so on. But this is the same for all cutting edge technology. I doubt my friends would want to trade their Reds but the serial numbers further down have only to benefit from all the feedback and increasing support.

Not that you can't work with Red as is of course - the Red community proves you can. But if it is good now it will be great come NAB!