# Mac Pro 2019 CPU Consensus



## goalie composer (Jul 22, 2020)

To the hive mind:

Is there a general consensus on the ideal CPU for the new Mac Pro 2019? Would love to hear your thoughts and feedback.

GC


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## charlieclouser (Jul 22, 2020)

16 or 28. Four people I know have gotten 16-core units, one has gotten a 28-core. Don't know anybody who's gotten any other configs. My pro audio retailer (who is an Apple dealer) reports that most of his music customers are getting 16-core units, and they are flying off the shelves. Most get the smallest RAM config available from Apple and then upgrade with sticks from OWC.

The lower base clock of the 28 (and the massive price) gives me pause, but I have not seen an apples-to-apples comparison between the two to see if the lower base clock of the 28 presents any issues with Logic's "last core loading" that are eased with the higher base clock of the 16. This issue has eased considerably with recent Logic updates - and this, combined with the better single-core performance of the generation of Xeon in the new machines vs the cylinders, means that it's not nearly as big of a concern as it was when choosing between 6 and 12 core cylinders running older versions of Logic. With Logic v10.2.4 and some hungry Kontakt libs I could max the last core on my 12-core cylinder, and the same project loaded on my 6-core cylinder ran fine at the same buffer with ~20% CPU left on that last core; however I have not done this test since Logic v10.5 came out to see if that comparison is still valid.

One friend went from 8-core cylinder to 16-core new Mac Pro, and a session that was absolutely maxing out all cores on his old system is running below 40% on the new machine. Both were on the latest Logic under Catalina.

I am still waffling between getting the 16 or the 28, but mainly because I rarely hit the limit even on my 12-core cylinder. I want to see a "last core loading" comparison before I decide. If there is not a huge difference then 28-core it is.

I will prob get the "one up from the bottom" video card - 5700 I think it is?


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## dgburns (Jul 22, 2020)

Got the 16 core myself. I can imagine I will upgrade the cpu in the future. It’s an improvement in many ways, but I can see maxing it out though.. Got the OWC pcie ssd card as well.

Got the rackmount, those rack rails are a bit over engineered imho, lol. Ended up actually using them.

This thing is quiet. Catalina and I aren’t getting along, but I’m seeing that most things moved over using migration tool. thankfully.

My motu midi interfaces , the midi express xt are working, but they have to be plugged into the USB3 ports, not my sonnet usb2 pcie card. no love there. Like I said, me and Catalina are learning how to be friends.

Won’t be getting rid of the pc slaves however, or vepro.


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## Apina (Jul 23, 2020)

I have a 12 core MP (2019) and on Logic 10.5.1 I get CPU spikes and eventually "System Overload" message even when the project isn't that big. It's actually quite dissapointing. The strange thing is that most of the time the CPU stays pretty low and then suddenly it goes up fast.


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## jononotbono (Jul 23, 2020)

The person I work for has bought a 16 core and a 28 core. The 28 core is for composition and some video work. The 16 core is Pro Tools Mixing. I basically said to him he should get the 28 Core for composition so he has a massive amount of expandability regarding RAM should he so choose.

I can't remember exact prices at the minute but when speccing out these machines, it made no sense to get anything under 16 core when you’re already coming from a 12 Core Trash Can. Apple prices are heavy but when you look at the upgrade cost between the 8 core, 12 core etc, it was just one of these things where it's not worth getting anything less.

Of course, Apple give a Minimum of 32gb of RAM that you have to pay for instead of giving an option of 8gb or 16gb. And this is plainly obvious because they know everyone will use 3rd party RAM. So the massive cost of these machines came mainly down to choosing the CPUs. Unfortunately I haven't been able to test them out properly with some heavy projects as the studio I work at has been busy doing other things (and I'm still batch resaving quite a mountain of libraries).

Here are a few of my thoughts on these machines. When you open it up you have to remove all cables.It’s not like before with the 5,1 where you can remove the side panel. Because the outer case has a small cut out for where the cables are, it means having to disconnect everything in order to open it.

When you have got the outer case removed, you can’t power the machine on. There is a sensor at the top of the tower that connects with the outer case (it’s also where there are two TB3 ports). This may not seem like an issuebut considering youhave to put the outer casing and then reconnect every cable before turning back on, this can be tedious if you need to change anything straight away or if you are checking something. say you were checking RAM modules. You would have to remove all cables, remove out casing, check ram module. Then put outer casing back on and then reconnect all cables and then turn back on. Want to check the next RAM module? Well you’ll have to do that all over again. Anyway...

The RAM covers are cheap plastic. Not machined aluminium as I was expecting.

So, it’s time to plug all you’re SSDs in. Simple... oh, actually it’s not.When it ships, you open it and realise there are no physical drive bays. Obviously the main OSX drive is flash storage and you choose what you want in that respect. However, what about all of your 2.5 Sata 3 SSDs? Well, I guess you can buy a PCIe card fromSonnet and plug them into the mobo. Currently, we are using multiple thunder bays (TB3) from OWC connected via a TB3 cable. It works fine. However, it’s now this situation where it is with the Trash Can. A computer with lot of stuff hanging out of it’s ass. And this is fine, I expect a computer to have loads of stuff connected to it but I can’t for the love of Apple understand why there are no drive bays, in such a nice big tower (it’s not as big as people may think compared to photos - still big but not a patch on some Server grade PC cases) so that everything can be contained inside the computer. Which leads on to...

“Yes, but you buy Apples MPX modules and their modular storage plugs directly into the Mobo”.

True. But this was another hugely disappointing thing. You can buy a 32tb MPX module that ships in RAID 5 so you will have 24tb useable storage. That sounds nice. 24tb of raided flash storage or SSDs. Well that MPX module cost costs $2500!! And it contains 4 x 7200 spinner HDD! This, to me is the one issue I can’t understand. Who on earth wants to use Spinners in a brand new Mac Pro? And who wants to pay $2500 for them?

No doubt over time there will be companies that create all sorts of stuff to bypass this ridiculousness but the MPX module was the main thing I couldn’t believe. A black magic dock (as before) or an OWC Thunder Bay works a treat. Just a shame it can’t all gone in the machine.

Speaking of which, there are 4 TB3 ports (I think that’s incredibly tight to be honest). 2 on the back and 2 on the top. There are only 2 USB3 ports. So guess what else you’re going to be plugging in and hanging out of the machine So you can have your iLoks, Dongles, peripherals etc... At least 1 Powered USB hub. Which is fine because everyone uses a powered hub. It would have been nice to have 4 USB3 ports. I mean, so you can have options before having to fork out for a TB3 hub. I guess Apple think, “we’ll it ships with a rechargeable wireless mouse and keyboard so 2 is plenty”. I get it, I just think 2 is very tight.

There are, however, two HDMI ports which I really like. It made connecting two 4k PC monitors very simple yesterday and was the first time in a while where I thought, “I don’t actually need an adapter for once”.

Other than the RAM covers, which really do feel so shitty, the machine looks like a thing of beauty. I can’t wait to test it with a massive project and see what happens with CPU usage.

Oh, something I found very humourous Yesterday. So, these machines haven’t got the $400 wheels. Obviously. After doing some reconfiguring in a studio yesterday the discussion came up, “maybe we should put them on a couple of wheel boards?” And then the genius of the Apple hive mind hit me. Because you have to remove the outer casing by pulling it off vertically (after you remove all cables of course), it makes it impossible to have underneath your desk. So you have to unplug it all, pull the machine out, and then you can remove the sides. I started laughing to myself when I thought, “We should have bought the fucking wheels! That’s exactly why they’ve designed the case like this. Over time, they will sell hundreds of wheel sets because people are gonna get so annoyed they can’t roll their machines out to remove the out casing”. Gotta hand it to Apple, it’s genius. 😂


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## Eloy (Jul 23, 2020)

Current configuration: Mac Pro 16 core,128 GB ram, 8 TB hard drive,AMD 5700x, added 4 port usb-c sonnet card, UAD arrow interface.

This computer laughs at projects my previous Mac Pro (12 core 6.1) with a Mac mini I7 2018 slave would have been crying over. I no longer need a slave. Instead running VePro (Logic Pro 10.5.1) on a single machine is a must. Without VePro there will be CPU spikes. With VePro there is nothing this machine cannot handle.


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## Rtomproductions (Jul 23, 2020)

Lol, I thought I was a baller with my 12 core 

I'm sticking with my slave PC (a beast of a machine itself) for now until I can find some time between projects to build a "Mac only" template and see how it handles some trailer work. So far, my experience is in line with everyone else; the Pro performance makes the trash can look just...sad. The CPU architecture is many generations advanced from the old one, so even core vs. core performance will be pretty significantly different.

I cheaped out on my SSD's, kind of unknowingly; not ever having worked with PCIe interfaces before, I was under the mistaken assumption that one card per slot would be ideal.

So I stupidly ordered 5 M.2 SSD's and 5 PCIe (4x)-->M.2 adaptor cards. I could have just gotten one of the 16x PCIe cards that accepted 4 SSD's and I'd be getting the same performance as what I have now, but I really don't care; I've still got PCIe slots to spare and the M.2 speeds are far beyond what is required for sample library streaming these days. And with 196GB of RAM I should be fine.

Sessions that used to take 5-6 minutes to load (and I was still using all TB2-->SATA3 SSD's with the trash can) are loading in about 30 seconds, so I'm happy.

Is the Pro overpriced? Hardware/dollar, yeah, a bit. But if you're stuck on Logic, to say the upgrade is worth it is an understatement.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Jul 23, 2020)

charlieclouser said:


> most of his music customers are getting 16-core units, and they are flying off the shelves



How big are his shelves?


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## synthnut1 (Jul 23, 2020)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> How big are his shelves?


Lol!!!!


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## ChristianM (Jul 23, 2020)

Mac Pro 28 cores, 512 GB of RAM (OWC), 8 TB Apple disk, AMD Radeon Pro W5700X 16 GB, Sonnet Fusion SSD M.2 x4 for the 4 NVME of 2TB each.
It's perfect.
But it lacks a line output to go to the active speakers, that's petty!


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