REPLACEMENT GPU FOR MAC PRO 2013 WINDOWS
The practical realities of a particular workflow can destroy any theoretical advantage of “faster” GPUs: your author’s photography work is not only not improved by GPU support, it is badly degraded: the “checkerboard flicker” when toggling layers and windows in Photoshop is so distracting that it mandates turning OpenGL support off in Photoshop (TBD if the 2013 Mac Pro fixes this).
It is really a recommendation of allowing some headroom on both GPU and CPU fronts, taking into account the reality that 8 or 12 CPU cores and the D700 GPUs are not likely to help in meaningful ways with the vast majority of mainstream uses. The above recommendation will surely satisfy the vast majority of mainstream users, but in truth the 4-core model with D300 GPUs will also do so.
The 6-core Mac Pro with D500 GPUs offers an ideal blend of CPU core count, CPU clock speed and high performance GPUs, all without ramping up the price way beyond the 4-core model.
REPLACEMENT GPU FOR MAC PRO 2013 SOFTWARE
But mixed-workflow environments coupled with the potential for improved software support for GPUs holds out some hope, which leads to the MPG recommendation for the best “sweet spot”: What about mainstream uses?įor mainstream usage, the situation is mostly about CPU choice with the 6-core Mac Pro offering an ideal middle ground for the reality of most software: two more cores than the 4-core for peak loads with well written software, and running at the same fast clock speed (via Turbo Boost) for all other tasks using only a few cores (the common case).Īs of early 2014, most mainstream uses do not call upon the GPU for much useful work. Of course, a lot of video work is done that has modest number-crunching requirements, and for such users even the base D300 GPUs are fine and to call them “slow” would be silly indeed. Taking the example to an extreme, there can be tasks such that a base-model 4-core Mac Pro with the high end D700 GPUs is far better than a 6/8/12 core CPU with the D300 or D500 GPUs. In short, only if the specific task in a specific application is GPU-optimized.įor video processing where the computing demands are large (effects, transcoding, etc), the D700 GPUs are a no-brainer choice. The D700 GPUs will offer marginal benefits for mainstream tasks over the D300 GPUs until and unless programs are optimized for it, and yet if the task is transcoding or rendering effects for 4K video, the D700 GPUs are a game changer. That approach is highly effective for specialized video processing and scientific and rendering tasks, but generally offers little if any benefit to mainstream computing tasks.Īccordingly, when deciding on a 2013 Mac Pro, the question of whether to order the Mac Pro with the D300 or D500 or D700 GPUs is entirely a question of what will be done with it.
The GPU-centric idea is simple: for tasks that require serious number crunching, the powerful dual GPUs will hugely outperform the CPU. And with a 64GB memory ceiling, certain high-end computing is constrained. It happens to be good at a lot of other things too, but clearly the emphasis is on video, in particular 4K video. In short, the 2013 Mac Pro is a machine designed first and foremost for video processing of HD or 4K video. It is an odd disconnect with the appeal of two very fast GPUs, most likely because video use is generally well served with 64GB of memory. This is a machine optimized for video, scientific and other computation-intensive tasks, though some tasks of that nature require enormous data sets, and thus 128GB or 256GB of memory is highly desirable. There is hope that the Apple standardization of powerful GPUs in the Mac Pro might lead to deeper and better support over time for GPU acceleration by OS X software developers, but that is a promise with an uncertain payoff. The 2013 Mac Pro places a huge emphasis on graphics processing units (GPUs) by using two of them, but with only a single CPU (and a limiting 4 memory slots). See also MPG’s computer gear wishlist as well as diglloyd-recommended performance packages for Mac Pro. Send Feedback Related: 2013 Mac Pro, 4K and 5K display, computer display, GPU, Mac Pro, Macs, memory, Photoshop, video
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