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New Mac Pro Slower than an iMac? (6-Core D500 vs Quad-Core GTX 780M)

2014-01-26
today's video is made possible by Hulu Plus for a free extended two-week trial at over to Hulu Plus com / TLD hey guys johnathan your TLD hope you guys are doing well I am back with yet another comparison this time we are taking a look at the brand new late 2013 Mac Pro against the top-of-the-line iMac which also came out late last year so the Mac Pro that I am using is the 6 core model and I completely understand that it's not apples for apples in terms of quad core versus quad core but I figured some people that are either coming from an iMac or comparing these models might view these 6 core as kind of that next step up and would find this information useful now if you guys find this interesting and you guys want to see a similar video comparing the quad core Mac Pro versus iMac let me know by hitting that like button and I will do my best to get my hands on that now Before we jump into the actual benchmarks and performance it's going to take a look at the configuration and the pricing between this Mac Pro and the iMac so this Mac Pro is configured with a 6 core 3.5 gigahertz Xeon CPU this is desktop-class components for these tests I have a configure with 16 gigs of 1866 megahertz ECC memory twin AMD FirePro D 500 GPUs with 3 gigs of video memory each and last but not least 256 gigs of PCIe flash storage and it's going to come out to a grand total of $39.99 u.s. jump it over to the iMac this is configured with a quad-core 3.5 gigahertz i7 Haswell CPU eight gigs of memory which is coming in at 1600 megahertz ddr3 an nvidia gtx 780 m with four gigs of video memory a three terabyte fusion drive and this comes out to a grand total of 26 99 us now I know before we continue there's going to be one major thing that stands out to most to you guys and that is the three terabytes on the iMac vs. a 256 gigabytes on the Mac Pro and that's actually where these two differ quite a bit first and foremost pure pcie-based flash storage is much faster than a traditional hard drive obviously or even a fusion drive if we take a look at black magic disk speed test you can see in terms of read speeds that Mac holds up pretty well gets the Mac Pro but if we look at the write speeds that's really where the Mac Pro separates itself the IMAX fusion drive was performed at around 321 megabytes per second in terms of write speed whereas the Mac Pro was looking nearly a gigabyte a second at 803 megabytes per second now in terms of how that into real-world performance to duplicate a 10.5 gigabyte file the iMac to 108 seconds to do that whereas the Mac Pro took 21.9 seconds so you can see there's a huge difference there with that said the iMac is geared really for internal expansion obviously you're not really meant to do that after the fact or after you order it but when you are configuring it you can choose from a 1 terabyte standard 7200 rpm hard drive up to a 3 terabyte fusion drive or you can choose from pure pcie-based flash storage ranging from 256 gigs up to one terabyte now the Mac Pro on the other hand is really meant not for internal expansion but completely for external expansion you have six Thunderbolt ports on the back as opposed to the two on the iMac so all your extra storage is really meant to come from thunderbolt drives raid arrays things of that nature as opposed to internally like on the iMac another thing to consider is there is no display with the Mac Pro whereas the iMac comes with a beautiful 2560 by 1440 IPS display is definitely not 4k but it's higher resolution than 1080p so definitely keep that in mind when you are considering your purchase jumping back to the performance looking at Geekbench 3 the 64-bit edition if you notice the single core score the iMac actually outperforms the mac pro with a score of 38 34 as opposed to 36 12 on the Mac Pro so this means for applications that really don't take advantage of multi-core or multi threads this gives the iMac potential to outperform the Mac Pro now looking at the multi-core score you can clearly see where the Mac Pro pulls ahead with the score of 20,000 710 as opposed to 14,000 446 on the iMac and conversely where the applications do take advantage of multicores and multi-threading this is where the Mac Pro would obviously pull ahead so for Cinebench r15 the CPU portion again you can see this is where the Mac Pro outperforms the iMac with a score of 961 compared to 698 Lux mark 2.1 which really showcases OpenCL performance where the Mac Pro is supposed to shine really shows off the power of the twin D 500s and this is actually one of the few applications that actually recognizes both so you can see it scored 3194 K rays a second as opposed to the 940 one on the iMac and the GTX 780 M now in the opposite end of the spectrum Unigine valley 1.0 does not recognize both of the D 500 so in this case the GTX 780 M on the iMac outperforms the Mac Pro with 34.2 average frames per second compared to 29.4 on a single d5 hundred jumping back over to Cinebench r15 this time we're looking at the OpenGL section and again you can see the imac actually outperforms mac pro because it is only recognizing 1d 500 so again if you are looking to do a little bit of gaming with your imac this is where it's actually going to shine it outperform the mac pro but again if you are looking to game where you're buying a mac pro just for gaming you are completely wasting your money you should probably just build your own PC for that jumping over to photoshop CC this really showcases how Adobe programs right now aren't geared to take advantage of the power of the mac pro most of them are operating on barely any of the cores and in this case the iMac again outperforms the mac pro it beats it out by nearly ten seconds so again this goes back to that Geekbench single core performance where the iMac is outperforming the Mac Pro next up is handbrake the 64-bit Edition this is a one-minute MKV file transcoded into a high profile h.264 file unlike the Photoshop benchmark this actually takes advantage of all the cores on the mac pro so here you can see where the mac pro pulls ahead beating the imac by about 15 seconds next up is Final Cut Pro 10 which was designed and optimized to take complete advantage of the twin GPUs in the Mac Pro what I did was take a seven-second h.264 clip retimed it down to 50% stabilize it and then applied optical flow you can see here the Mac Pro clearly outperforms iMac doing that task in 24 seconds as opposed to 35 on the iMac continuing on with Final Cut Pro 10 applying a blur filter to a 45 second clip it took 12 seconds on the Mac Pro and 15 seconds on the IMAX not really a huge difference there but the Mac Pro did beat it in this case next up we're looking at Final Cut Pro 10 export times and this one was actually really wacky if you notice the Mac Pro in terms of a regular three-minute 1080p h.264 export does beat the iMac at 3 minutes and 22 seconds as opposed to 3 minutes and 34 seconds not huge but it does beat it but if we actually export that same project with a single pass compressor export the iMac does it in 53 seconds as opposed to 2 minutes and 59 seconds on the Mac Pro now I'm sure anybody looking at these numbers is scratching their head and wondering how is it possible that the iMac could outperform the Mac Pro by that big of a margin from what I've gathered the iMac actually supports Intel's quick sync in certain aspects so for this one it's actually going to use hardware acceleration to speed up the ask and you can see there's a huge difference on the iMac compared to the Mac Pro which does not support quick sync on the xeon processor now grant it from what i've learned it only applies to single pass exports not multi pass so for higher quality exports and things like that you're not really going to take advantage of that on the imac but if you're doing just basic single pass exports that may be something to consider when you're looking to pick up one of these models moving on to even more Final Cut Pro 10 test because these are optimized to take advantage of the video cards to transcode three minutes of 1080p footage it took 39 seconds on the Mac Pro as opposed to 45 seconds on the iMac now I also did some 4k tests I did a two-minute 4k export and this is actually used from Blackmagic sample footage I have a link to this where you can download it if you guys want to check that out it took 5 minutes and 35 seconds on the iMac as opposed to 5 minutes and 7 seconds on the Mac Prost not a huge difference but the Mac Pro was definitely faster and I also took one of those 4k clips did a little color correction copied and pasted those attributes onto 10 more files and then timed out how long it would take to render the Mac Pro took 22 seconds to do that whereas the iMac took 35 so here you can see there was a pretty big difference between these two next up is After Effects CC and this really showcases how Adobe stuff is not optimized to use mac pro power because right now they completely don't take advantage of that and after effects it was barely using one of the cores and just really not using any of the power on the mac pro in this case you can see the iMac does outperform the Mac Pro in both a stabilized test and a track camera test and both by pretty significant amounts same exact thing in Premiere Pro with a warp stabilized test took 38 seconds on the Mac Pro versus 32 seconds on the iMac so again Adobe really needs to update the programs to take advantage of the Mac Pro now all the Adobe tests were completely bad news in a three minute 1080p h.264 export the Mac Pro did beat the iMac with a total time of three minutes 49 seconds as opposed to 4 minutes and 20 seconds on the iMac so there you guys have it pretty interesting and definitely not what I would have expected but I wanted to bring this information out to you guys who are considering picking up either an iMac or a Mac Pro hopefully you found this information helpful if you did and you are feeling like being awesome feel free to hit that like button it is much appreciated and before I hop out of here I want to give a huge shout out to Hulu Plus for making this video possible most you guys being on the interwebs know what Hulu is but Hulu Plus ramps up the awesome and is kind of like upgrading to an HD screen on your smartphone or tablet for the first time with Hulu Plus you can catch up on the entire season of currently airing shows you can watch old favorites or even a movie you can stream as many TV shows or movies as you want anytime anywhere so whether that's your ps4 your xbox one your Roku Hulu Plus has a huge selection of shows like Saturday Night Live Jimmy Kimmel and of course shock tank they also feature exclusive original content like behind the mask and the wrong mans and they were nice enough to reach out to me and offer those who watched eld a free extended two-week trial by heading over to Hulu Plus comm slash TLD now a lot of you ask how can you help support the channel this is a super simple and easy way to do that it allows us to put out the best possible content that we can and just for a killer deal at the same time make sure to use that link down below to let them know we sent you so to sum things up at this point unless you're doing Final Cut Pro 10 there's not a whole lot on the Mac Pro that really takes advantage of the twin GPUs or all the processing power of the CPU I think it solidifies that the iMac is a pretty stellar bang for your buck package in terms of what you get for the price and conversely does that mean that the Mac Pro is not worth the money and I think that really comes down to what you're using it for and how long-term of a setup you're looking to have obviously the Mac Pro just came out so it is going to take time for programs and companies to jump aboard and make sure their programs and applications take advantage of the twin GPUs and all the power of the Mac Pro I do plan on doing follow-up videos maybe three four five six months down the road to see how it progresses and how applications do take advantage of the power so definitely subscribe if you have not already so that way you don't miss out on any of that content if you guys have any questions on the iMac the Mac Pro or tech in general definitely leave me a comment down below I do try my best to keep up with YouTube comments although it does get a little bit tricky so the absolute best way to go to holding me is on twitter at TLD today and also google+ and facebook which is linked down below along with the gear that I use to make these videos I do have the 8 core Mac Pro model on the way so definitely stay tuned for that as well and if you guys want to see some MacBook Pro comparisons that is linked right here again this is Jonathan with TLD and I will see you guys later
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