New iMac PRO - spec recommendations

I am very excited about the new announcement of the coming iMac PRO. It seems likely that if I sell my car and my house, I would be able to afford the top-shelf model! However, if I choose not to liquidate all my assets, then I will need to find a happy medium between cost and performance, based on actual need.

I know that everyone is different. We have different cash situations, different work requirements and different tolerance for sub par performance. So in light of the above, I would like to have a discussion on what people think will be the sweet spot for a 1-man editing environment.

Perhaps, users of Mac Pro can share experiences, such as is there a point in RAM size, when extra RAM is really not returning much benefit, or similar question on GP and GPU Memory.

I plan using the iMac Pro with a Promise Pegasus3 box, so this will provide fast external storage.

The primary questions that spring to my mind:

1. Which CPU
2. Which GPU
3. How mach RAM
4. How much video ram

Anything else?

If your just editing 1080p the base model should be more than enough unless you have something odd in your workflow that demands extra power. (3d rendering?, massive noise reduction? crazy turnaround times?) I don't have enough experience with 4k to make a recommendation on that.

pszilard wrote: …
Anything else?

…software?
I'm by far no expert on this terrain, but would the actual version of FCPX make use of the sheer powers of a Xeon CPU - compared to actual i7s, with hyperthreating and all those marvels ?
Is there a real life noticeable difference btw 16GB Ram and 128GB?

Speaking of real life, a fictional example:
200% faster would mean, a proxy transcode doesn't take 20min but 10 .... hmmm? so …? Meanwhile you do …what?

When the iMacPro will come out we will read breathtaking benchmarks, no doubt. And those of us who calculate the rain-chances for next month, the aerodynamics of an Aston Martin DB 11 or render Jurassic Park IX (in VR) will sing odes of joy …

… but for editing? Plain, ol' editing? …
actual bottlenecks are less 'power' but pipelines … TB3 and SSD-Raids (and faster network protocols & servers) solve that.

… Oliver Breidenbach, CEO of Boinx, quote "Alone the space-grey color makes it 20% faster!"

Karsten Schlüter wrote: … Oliver Breidenbach, CEO of Boinx, quote "Alone the space-grey color makes it 20% faster!"

This decision to make this 'Pro' product line instantly distinguishable through the evil color will cause 20% more sells, if not more. I see myself on the hook already. I feel my current iMac has just been declared obsolete. It's a year old, but it feels vintage all of a sudden.

My really vintage MacPro early 2009 didn't handle 4k well. Other than that the performance differences were not as dramatic as one should expect.[/i] Are not, I should say. It didn't pass away, it still works.

Buying an iMac Pro is like ordering a Ferrari. You can't drive at maximum speed anywhere anyway. But would you buy a reasonable model with less horsepower? A castrated beast?

If I won he lottery, I had bought the 18-core version. But only if there was a 27" 4k Apple cinema display in space grey as well. Otherwise I'll soldier on with my ancient 5k iMac. And don't go to he dentist anymore. Why? He has the same goddam machine for his receptionist !!!

Axel wrote: … I feel my current iMac has just been declared obsolete. …

… 'vintage' 27" 5k iMac to offer? … here, here! :woohoo:
I care for its … disposal. LOL

Guess, the imacPro is MY chance to get my hobbyist-dream-machine for cheap …

btw: "Moin!"

Karsten Schlüter wrote: btw: "Moin!"

"Morning ..."
"Morning ..."
"Morning , what's new?"
"Not much ..."
"Howard is being eaten."
"Oh, really?"
"Makes you think, doesn't it?"

Karsten Schlüter wrote: … but for editing? Plain, ol' editing? …

Apple wrote: Particle simulation? Elementary.
Billowing smoke. Torrential rain. A wheat field in the wind. With up to 18 cores and Hyper-Threading, iMac Pro lets you build and render particle systems of all kinds — static or animated, 2D or 3D — with ease.

As far as I can see, there is no Apple app that generates a wheat field in the wind, or is there? Will there also be
Motion X
???

Axel wrote: …

Apple wrote: Particle simulation? Elementary.
Billowing smoke. Torrential rain. A wheat field in the wind. …

<cough> wouldn't count particle-animation/simulation into 'plain editing'… but, anyhow, sure, physics and liquids and smoke and … would dramatically be enhanced!!

…
Motion X
???[

don't make me … fidgety !!!

I think the biggest benefit of the speed would be for me, that background rendering is faster. Having TB 3 instead of my current TB 1 would be a big advantage with a Promise3 raid box. I also don't have a 5k display, so that would be another step forward. To draw a 5k screen would need the better performance.

So the question is what specs make sense...

Karsten Schlüter wrote: ....but would the actual version of FCPX make use of the sheer powers of a Xeon CPU - compared to actual i7s, with hyperthreating and all those marvels ?...Is there a real life noticeable difference btw 16GB Ram and 128GB?....

At the same clock rate and core count, the Xeon has no miracle performance features vs i7, in fact it lacks Quick Sync which is vital for long-GOP video (H264, H265, etc). However it does have a lot more cores available, up to 18 for the iMac Pro. It will also have a much faster GPU. Apple described the GPU as 3x the performance of the 2013 Mac Pro -- whether that was single or dual card they didn't say.

Karsten Schlüter wrote: ...Speaking of real life, a fictional example:
200% faster would mean, a proxy transcode doesn't take 20min but 10 .... hmmm? so …? Meanwhile you do …what?...editing? Plain, ol' editing? …

Yes -- in your specific example, why get a $9,000 machine to save 10 min. But in my case I have a top-spec 2015 iMac 27 connected to an 8 terabyte RAID-0 Thunderbolt 2 drive array, and it takes one *week* to create proxies for the 4k documentary I'm working on. If an 18-core iMac Pro can do that in 2 days, that saved me 5 days.

All our downstream editors use a proxy-only workflow, but someone (me) has to generate those plus do selects and dailies. It would be nice to do selects without first building proxies. The iMac Pro (or likely even a top-spec 2013 Mac Pro) could do that.

It's not "Plain ol' editing", but someone has to finish it, which means effects, including Neat Video, de-flickering, stabilization, etc. With 4k, that is incredibly unwieldy on a top-spec current iMac. That's yet another case where a 10 or 18-core iMac Pro would help.

Karsten Schlüter wrote: ...actual bottlenecks are less 'power' but pipelines … TB3 and SSD-Raids (and faster network protocols & servers) solve that....

My 4-drive RAID-0 Thunderbolt 2 SSD array does about 1,800 MB/sec. That is not the bottleneck for all these places where the current iMac is slow. The problem is inadequate CPU cores and GPU horsepower. The current Mac Pro addresses part of that, but it's just too old to buy right now. The iMac Pro will help a lot in those areas for people who need it.

Good discussion here.

If I was working on projects that took a week to render proxies, then I would seriously consider having a Mac farm and sharing the work out to multiple Macs. For $9k you could probably add 3 2nd hand iMacs to the existing one. Another possibility would be to build a top spec PC with water cooling and GPUs and just do the proxy creation on that. You could still do the cutting on FCPX. Anyway just thoughts "outside the box".

My original question still remains and is unanswered. I wasn't so much asking whether or not the extra $$ and power are worth having, as that is clearly dependent on usage scenario, but rather asking at what point is higher specs and $$ stop returning value for money. I.e. if one had 128GB of RAM, but the system would never use more than, say, 64GB then the extra RAM would just be a waste of $$. Similarly if FCPX could not utalise all 16 cores, then that would be a wasted expense. I don't know the answers, so these are just examples.

Just came across a good summary of current updates.

Makes me wonder how viable it is to just buy the new, but current iMac - maxed out - rather than wait for the expensive Pro version. Especially if you are on a model that is a few years old. (I am on a late 2013 model, for instance, which lacks 5k screen and has only TB1).

pszilard wrote: ... but rather asking at what point is higher specs and $$ stop returning value for money. I.e. if one had 128GB of RAM, but the system would never use more than, say, 64GB then the extra RAM would just be a waste of $$.

I saw a RAM usage test on Youtube comparing FCP X with Premiere, and judging from that test it seemed as if FCP X *can't* address 16 GB RAM, let alone more (Premiere can - and does), which would make this the sweet spot. How about Motion or what else you'd use? Don't know.

pszilard wrote: Makes me wonder how viable it is to just buy the new, but current iMac - maxed out - rather than wait for the expensive Pro version.

In six months, when (or if) the iMac Pro is shipping, there might be hundreds of used maxed out 5ks on Ebay, possibly below $2000, which may also be the difference between 32 and 128 GB RAM on the new machine, a difference the owners can feel but never prove, in The Emperor's New Clothes' fashion ...

Axel wrote: … I saw a RAM usage test on Youtube comparing FCP X with Premiere, and judging from that test it seemed as if FCP X *can't* address 16 GB RAM,… ...

… could someone of our hardware experts share some insights on that:
addressing Ram >16GB Ram;
FCPX' usage of more than core;
known so far Xeons lack built-in encoders for h264/h265?

Axel wrote: …
In six months, when (or if) the iMac Pro is shipping, there might be hundreds of used maxed out 5ks on Ebay, possibly below $2000 … ...

YES!! …

I wonder how much benefit the newer and more powerful GPU option will mean in real terms to the FCPX editors.

I also wonder what is the max transfer rate across TB1 to Promise Pegasus box. I keep seeing crazy fast speeds, but only under TB2 and TB3. If TB3 can provide 1.8GBps (circa 16 Gbps if you take 8bits+parity, for each byte) over TB3, how saturated can TB1 get in real life? If I guess, 70%, that would mean 7Gbps, or 780MBps. Is that attainable? In contrast my 2013 iMac SSD is about 700MBps on internal SSD.

For me the real advantage of a iMac Pro doesn't really lie with FCP X, which is really well optimized, but with all the no Apple software people use like Resolve, which eats up a lot more power but is an essential part of many workflows.

I edit 4K on TB1 RAID.

Is it viable to build a super hackintosh for FCPX, or is it asking for compatibility trouble???

How reliable is the current iMac 5k 2017? If I bought a 2nd hand one is it a gamble due to warranty not being available?

pszilard wrote: ...what is the max transfer rate across TB1 to Promise Pegasus box...

As FCPX.guru implied, you generally don't need TB2 or TB3 performance simply to edit 4k. Once you get to about 500 MB/sec, that is plenty fast for most cases. TB2 or 3 allows flexibility to string more array boxes together without maxing out the channel, and with TB3 to add video data or even DC power for devices.

pszilard wrote: Is it viable to build a super hackintosh for FCPX, or is it asking for compatibility trouble???..

The key phrase is "hackintosh for FCPX". There are cookbook approaches to building a very powerful Hackintosh, but whether that has major performance advantages for FCPX is another matter. Typically Hackintoshes will not support Quick Sync which is important to FCPX for any long GOP codec such as H264, H265, and all variants such as Sony XAVC-S. Even if you have a ProRes or proxy workflow but must transcode from H264, transcoding is much faster with Quick Sync. The problem with Hackintoshes is they usually cannot dynamically switch between the Intel on-chip GPU and the external discrete GPU. That means the on-chip GPU must usually be disabled in the motherboard BIOS which in turn disables Quick Sync.

If the workflow is 100% ProRes from end-to-end, (cameras acquire in ProRes, you edit in ProRes and export in ProRes) then a powerful Hackintosh might be a better fit. But even then the GPU must well match FCPX needs. A super-powerful nVidia GPU may produce great synthetic benchmarks, but does that make FCPX which is using OpenCL and Metal APIs go any faster? The Hackintosh must be highly tailored to proven FCPX utility, which drastically shrinks the knowledge base of proven Hackintosh configurations.

And that high-end all-ProRes workflow is more likely an upper-echelon professional project. Who is going to support the Hackintosh on which the project depends? Who do you call when it crashes?

pszilard wrote: ...How reliable is the current iMac 5k 2017? If I bought a 2nd hand one is it a gamble due to warranty not being available?

My top-spec 2017 iMac 27 has been very reliable and I've used it brutally. I often have it transcoding for two days straight. Unfortunately it's not as quiet as a 2013 Mac Pro but it is about twice as fast at encoding, decoding and transcoding H264. It's faster than a 12-core D700 Mac Pro on the BruceX GPU-oriented benchmark, and nearly as fast on Neat Video noise reduction.

Thanks for a very informative reply! Factoring in the 5k screen, I am convinced that I won't be going hackintosh.

So the primary question remains: maxed out iMAc 2017 with 2TB SSD, i7 (7th gen., 4.2GHz) and 64GB from OWC - vs an iMac PRO with 2TB SSD. 8-core and 64GB ram, 8GB Vram.

NOTE: I am not interested in VR and sophisticated Motion and I have a Promise Pegasus 3 with 24TB space and Thunderbolt 3 interface.

2nd question: with any 5k iMac, is it stupid to keep my existing 2560x1440 Cinema screen (TB connected), or would it still be handy for use as a 2nd monitor?

Am I correct that iMac Pro has soldered ram, which can't be user upgraded?

pszilard wrote: ...So the primary question remains: maxed out iMAc 2017 with 2TB SSD, i7 (7th gen., 4.2GHz) and 64GB from OWC - vs an iMac PRO with 2TB SSD. 8-core and 64GB ram, 8GB Vram....

Yes that is the question, although I'm not sure you'd need 64GB RAM (on the regular iMac) The iMac Pro is a more difficult case since it allegedly has soldered RAM and cannot be upgraded. However it hasn't shipped yet so we don't know for sure.

The dilemma is a top-spec 2017 iMac 27 is really fast on editing any kind of H264 or long GOP codec with FCPX. It is about 2x faster at encode, decode, transcode and scrubbing a 4k h264 timeline than a top-spec 2015 (which I also have), and I'm not sure why. So an 8-core iMac Pro has a high hurdle to win on that workflow to a degree that justifies the price. Fortunately it is so near release you can just wait and see.

pszilard wrote: ... with any 5k iMac, is it stupid to keep my existing 2560x1440 Cinema screen (TB connected), or would it still be handy for use as a 2nd monitor?...

I personally don't like having two 27 inch monitors because I don't like turning my head back and forth, even a little. Another issue is the retina display is so superior to non-retina that I wouldn't be satisfied with the TB Cinema display. However maybe others could comment who use that display plus a retina iMac, or a 2013 and 2015 iMac connected via target display mode.