New Mac Pro for photography (raw edition).

Hi,
I want to buy the new Mac Pro in december for use as my main works station. I work mainly with Photoshop CS6 and Capture one, editing/retouching big amounts of RAW and TIFF files from Nikon and Hasselblad.
Im thinking in buy the 6 cores version with 16Gb or 32Gb if I get the money, (I think the 16Gb is the basic configuration for the six core and looks really good). Like this is a big investment for me, I was wondering if this will be the right configuration for my work. I am a photographer and an advanced retoucher. But I'm not sure if the 6 cores are really necessary for what I do (serious photo edition, fashion and publicity.). Maybe the 4 cores with 32Gb (or more) of Ram is just enough or... Maybe, its the 8 cores the right option.
This machine should last at least five years.
Any advice is welcome.
By the way, anyone knows how to solve the Eizo Colornavigator 6 compatibility with the OS X Mavericks issue?.
Thanks a lot!.
Cristóbal.

Hi FatMac and The hatter,
Thanks for yours suggestions, it's been very helpful!.
i'm using a MacBook Pro (6.2) 2.8GHz i7 8Gb Ram (not upgradable) and 500Gb SSD connected to an Eizo monitor. It does his job but lately having heavy overheating and slow down its performance in a notorius way. Its a good machine but is not made for serious editing.
Before that, I was using an imac 27 quad core 16Gb ram that I sold for get some money for the new Mac Pro.
This should be a notorious improvement for me.
Based on what you saying I think with the 6 cores at 32 Gb ram I will be ok. Im thinking on upgrade the Ram in the future. Probably the 8 cores will be too expensive for my budget and don't make a significant improvement for my work compared to the 6 cores.
Thank you very much for your advice and links!!.
Best,
C.

Similar Messages

Questions about buying a new Mac Pro for 4k video editing.

Hi everyone,
I'm currently looking into buying a new mac pro and I have a few questions. I'm a filmmaker/freelance editor looking to get a system that can handle any/at least most 4k formats that I might throw at it, and will hopefully last me around 7 years or so, like my last mac pro has. I've saved up about $5,300 and am becoming more obsessed with getting it asap, but am willing to wait a bit and save up more if necessary. I also play the occasional elder scrolls or civilization game, and might run windows on the new system as well. So here are my questions:
1. I've read rumors that a newer build could be released this year, with newer processors and graphics cards. Is there anything to point to when? I tend to buy things a month before a newer version is released, and I'd like to prevent myself from doing it this time around..
Here's the Build I'm looking at:
6 core
2 D700s
base ram to be upgraded myself to 32Gb (2x16Gb cards leaving 2 slots empty to expand to 64Gb later)
512Gb-1Tb internal hd
2. Should I be considering the 8 core? I'm not too excited about the additional $1500, but I want a system that will last.
3. Is getting the two 16Gb chips of ram and leaving two slots empty a bad idea?
4. I currently work with FCP studio 2 and love it. Not sure whether to go with FCP X, or adobe. Any thoughts?
5. I'm not finding many deals for cheaper ram and hard drives. OWC's prices seem to be comparable to Mac's. I want to do the ram so I have room to upgrade to 64Gb later, but are there any hard drives out there that would make it worth upgrading it myself?
I appreciate any insights you might have. I plan on getting a decent raid and 4k monitor in the next year or so, but for now just want a base system that will keep me editing and will be ready for 4k when I take that next step.

The late 2013 Mc Pro uses Intel Xeon ECC processors (error correction), and as far as I know Intel has not announced any newer Intel Xeon processors than those in the late 2013 Mac Pro. I would not expect to see an update to the 2013 Mac Pro until the end of 2015 at the earliest and probably later than that.
If time is not an issue, then you should be quite happy with the 6 core 2013 Mac Pro. It will do an excellent job with 4K video footage. And, yes, I would suggest getting the best raid system you can afford. That is actually more important than processor speed since I/O is frequently the bottleneck when doing multi camera video or 4K video.
I have the latest version of Adobe's Premiere Pro 2014 CC installed on my late 2013 Mac Pro and i have used it a bit without problems. However, I find it much much slower to edit with than FCP X. Also be advised that if you Google you will find several individuals on the Adobe Forums who purchased the late 2013 Mac Pro and have not been able to use it with Premiere Pro CC because of either a hardware incompatibility or software issues between Premiere Pro CC and BMD's Resolve. It is quite possible that I have not experienced these problems because I have not made very demanding projects with Premiere Pro CC on my 2013 Mac Pro.
I strongly recommend FCP X. Apple released FCP X before it was ready, and many early users were unwilling to take the time to learn how to use this very different NLE which is not track based. Apple has over the last 3 years since FCP X was released, issued more than 10 updates (all free), and the program is stable and blazingly fast. I urge you to check out the FCP X training offered by Ripple Training and/or Larry Jordan. Both are inexpensive, and worth every cent. Watch their training videos and you will be up to speed in FCP X in no time at all, and you will wish you had switched a long time ago.
If you can afford the 1 TB of PCie internal flash storage on your Mac Pro, then by all means get it. For me 1TB is well worth the cost.
As far as editing 4K video, the format of the video will be important to the ease of editing. For example, I am able to edit in its native format (XVAC S) several streams of 4K video form my Sony FDR-AX100 with no problems. If I were editing Sony's XVAC format used in their professional 4K cameras, that might pose a problem that would require transcoding. Similarly for other 4K formats. XVAC S is an easy format to edit natively because it is essentially a high bit rate h.264 format.
Best of luck on whatever you decide to do, and happy editing.
Tom

IMac vs the new Mac Pro for video editing in FCPX?

Hi.
I am currently using a macbook air for all my editing and rendering of videos in FCPX. The editing process is reasonably smooth when dealing with shorter clips, but when I tried to edit multicam clips, things started to slow down. Also, the rendering and compression processes are tedious. I am planning to edit and process a much larger number of videos in the next years to come, so I have decided to do a serious upgrade of my system.
For the moment, I am torn between a maxed out iMac 27", which would be the cheapest alternative, and the 6 core Mac Pro or 4 core Mac Pro.
When I look at benchmarks of the new Mac Pro's in Geekbench, the iMac is never very far away in terms of performance. Does tests like this tell anything about how well the Mac Pro will perform in FCP? Does the hardware in the Mac Pro have features which makes it superior to the iMac, in other ways than for example the "pure power" of the CPU and GPU?
Christopher.

FCP X 10.1, Motion 5.1 Updates w/Dual GPU Support (new Mac Pros) (from Thursday)
Apple released Final Cut Pro X 10.1 Thursday with support for Dual GPUs in the new Mac Pro and more.
Long list in the Final Cut Pro X 10.1 Release Notes that also links to info on How to back up important FCP X 10.0.x files before updating. (Today's Apple docs listing also has more related to Final Cut Pro X 10.1.)
Also out today are Compressor 4.1 and Motion 5.1. Full release notes below but here's a clip from the App store Motion 5.1 changes:
Optimized playback and rendering using dual GPUs in the new Mac Pro
FxPlug 3 with custom plug-in interfaces and dual-GPU support
Faster project loading, especially for complex projects
Share directly to YouTube at 4K resolution
Spanish language localization
Dual FirePro Dxxx Rendering FCP-X
http://www.barefeats.com/tube05.html
Intel Xeon processors are designed to run 24/7 and stay cool and under load.
Mac Pro so far hold up strongly for years, easy to add and upgrade RAM and processor, and maybe, hopefully, even the twin GPUs. Thunderbolt2 for all your projects and storage as well.
6 or 8-cores is going to walk away from iMac which is breathing hard and not designed for constant heat. Haswell was designed to conserve and reduce.

New Mac Pro for Photoshop

Hi,
I currently have a 2008 Mac Pro 2 x 2.8 Quad Core Intel Xeon that I am thinking of upgrading.
My questions are as follows.
Which set up would be best for photography based work, mainly Photoshops CS6 and Lightroom 4
I use a Drobo as my main working raid style hard drive.
I'm happy to spend money on a quality system but want to know it will be optimum for what I am using and dont want to just go for the 'top of the range' if it is pointless for the type of work I am doing (I never use video software at all)
Would there be a 3rd party company that would be better suited to set it up exactly for photography based work.
Am I right in saying the current Mac Pro's do not have thunderbolt or USB 3.0, so with that in mind, how long do people speculate that the new Mac Pro's will be available.
Thanks in advance.
Jason

YOU can see what Intel says (said?) at the Intel Conference this fall where they lay out for their vendors and everyonne what they plan and have in the oven for the next year.
Intel fell behind last year's plans with the complexity and issues they ran into, plus changes in the landscape. So did Nvidia with their new line. Hence everyone's plans went bonkers. And any IvyBridge Xeon? doesn't look like anything until this time next year, end of 2013. 2014 does have the next tic-toc and improved chips and memory architecture. DDR4 may get out of the labs.
That much is knowable.
But what you can do today: 2010 6-core 3.33 w/ 4x8GB and GTX 670 plus some nice storage hardware.
See this guy's articles and advice, a heavy graphics perspective:
www.macperformanceguide.com
Oh, and just my own personal.... a lot of 2008 owners are not happy campers for various reasons with power, stabilty, sleep/wake/freezes and maybe that 'first Mac Pro w/ EFI64" is showing crack in seams.
2010 for $1800 and up to around $3k - and your system is worth over a grand still once you can move over.

New mac pro slow converting raw files any help?

hallo everybody,
can someone help?
my new mac pro 3.7 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon E5 / 32 GB 1867 MHz DDR3 is converting raw files in camera raw really too slowly, about twice the time took with an iMac 2,7 GHz.
I tryed all graphic processor options on PS preferences.
I also ran mac check up utility and hardware seems ok.

The normal suspect would be that you haven't rendered out the previews, but the low cpu value would indicate that the problem actually lies elsewhere. Even so, it would do no harm to run the Render Standard-sized preview command (Library module View menu)
Next thought is the operating mode. Lightroom 2.x can run as either a 32-bit or 64-bit application. With the amount of ram you have installed (very low for a box with this sort of power) you might find 32-bit is the best choice. You can change the mode by clicking on the Lightroom application icon then use the Get Info command (Cmd+I) to open the info panel
Tip: you would be well advised to increase your installed ram. Lr likes plenty of ram, especially in 64-bit mode. A good starting point would be 6GB or even 8GB

Which new Mac Pro for Logic?

Well, they're out and on the AppleStore and I have about £2800 burning a hole in my pocket...
My question is, for that money I can configure either an 8-core machine running at 2.26GHz, or a quad-core running at 2.93GHz. Can anyone tell me which route is likely to be better for running Logic with lots of tasty plug-ins? I've budgeted for 8Gb of RAM and a second hard drive for sample data, so it's just the processor(s) left to decide on.
At the moment I'm running it on a 1.83GHz Core Duo MacBook Pro, where it limps along painfully, so I don't really have any experience of how well it utilises extra processing cores. I'd welcome any advice.

Hey MIke I agree that some thought should given to technology 5 years down the road but you are making my point about chasing technology. Its all a guessing game. Look at TVs. Look at phones. Etc.
Technology is moving so fast that you have to just use your gear in the moment and hope for the best.
It is not realistic in 2009 to predict 5 years down the road. Its just a big guess. What about the Mac pros that come out in 2 years. Will they make this years new Mac Pro obsolete? People will be having this same discussion in 2 years? They might not even make a desktop in 5 years. Look at the power of laptops now. Desktop sales are very weak and if this trend continues they will fade. I bought my 8 core almost a year ago and I would have had to wait a year if I chose to chase technolgy. When I bought my Apogee Ensemble I did think to myself that great they will probably release a new Ensemble with more Mic inputs. But I am glad I got it and use it and no worries. We are at the mercy of Apple so they will dictate the future and they arent going to tell consumers their 5 year plan anyway. Ok I will shut up.

Which new Mac Pro for Logic Studio?

Hi everyone,
I'm on the verge of ordering a new Mac Pro, but am tossed up over the quad 2.93 or the Octa 2.26. I'll be using it mainly for composing with Logic Studio. I find its a bit of a pain to record the sounds from my Motif ES8, so I'm going to start using software instruments more.
Does anyone know if Logic uses multiple cores? I googled this and couldn't find much on it.
If I get the quad, I'm going to load it to the max of 8G RAM. If I get the Octa 2.26, I will get 12G RAM. Will Logic take advantage of the extra RAM?
Right now, I'm leaning towards the quad 2.26. I keep my Macs for a long time. I currently have a 4 year old G5 iMac with 2G RAM.
Thanks for any opinions.

I'm With Dual G5 PowerPC version 3.1 (90nm thecnology)
Logic works fine, but when I need to recording with Omnisphere or Kontakt 3... or any Live Instruments... (anyway I'm able to use the Maximum power request patches of all 3rd party plugs that are installed in My G5)
I need MORE SINGLE THREAD POWER... because Logic and most of 3rdparty plugs allow you to use ONLY ONE CORE (or processor).
The ability to overclocking of the Nehalem processor is very interesting...
you will be able to have up to 3.3Ghz in a single thread operation!
So... I'm not sure to buy a new Mac before Snow Leopard... because I can use my G5 smoothly and if needed I have my Black Macbook for adding power (I have 2X Motu interface (828 MK3 and Mk2).
But if hypothetically I were to buy now...: the best Mac value for money semms to be the Quad 2.93 with full Ram set 8GB!
I don't believe about Multitrhead is needed for Live Audio performances
The power on the single core is very important...
I love to export as Audio the tracks
when I use 3rd party Instruments the ammount of crash risk during the Mix down the percentage are:
with Instruments in Live mode about 80% during professional mixdown
With Audio tracks 0% of crash diring professional Mixdown
Logic Pro is a rock solid DAW if used only with Audio tracks and Logic native instruments!
I'm able to MIX more than 160 Stereo tracks with My System...
I can wait for Snow Leopard Machines.
G

New Mac Pro for film scoring....

Hi guys,
I'm ready to upgrade my Quad G5 to a brand new MacPro.....
I plan to use Logic 9 and NI Komplete, Spectrasonics libraries, VSL Orchestral Cube (+ eventually Appassionata Strings), Kirk Hunter and Gariitan Orchestral Strings, EW Steinway B and PMI Grandioso Bosendorfer 290, Sam Horns and many many other sample libraries converted from Giga format to exs24 and Kontakt format plus a bunch of virtual synths....
My actual template consist of 200 assigned tracks but I only can play simultaneously 30-35 with effects (6 Space Designer and 10-12 Sonnox plugs) at 48 Khz sample rate and low poliphony....
My actual G5 will become a slave (streaming part of my template samples to the new Mac Pro)..
So I'm oriented to the Xeon Quad core "Nehalem" 3.2 Ghz with 16 Giga Ram...
What can I expect in terms of sample streaming and V.I. performance from such a system?
Thank you

Hello,
Up until recently I had a similar setup. My main Mac is a 2008 8-core Xeon with 16 GB RAM, and my main slave machine was a 2005 dual 2.3 GHz G5 with 8 GB RAM. My scoring template for the last 2 years (running on those 2 Macs) contains 300 tracks/instruments and 12 reverb buses, mostly running Space Designer.
On the Mac Pro I host 228 of those instruments; 128 of them are Kontakt instruments, 16 are EastWest Play instruments, 8 are VSL instruments (matrices) and 76 are Logic EXS instruments. All of these stream samples in real time from 9 dedicated SATA drives.
On the G5 I ran 72 more Kontakt-based instruments (East West Platinum orchestra & Storm Drum 1 percussion), also streamed from SATA drives. MIDI was routed via ethernet and audio from the G5 was returned via ADAT litepipe.
That system worked flawlessly - I think you'll be thrilled! I've since replaced my G5 with a new iMac, which is now one of my 2 slave machines - and I've also moved everything (except Logic instruments) into Vienna's Ensemble Pro AU/VST host, which is utterly amazing, and solves a lot of problems.
All in all, you'll have a VERY capable system
Best,

New Mac Pro for server

Dear Apple's Hardware Development Team,
From Apple's Xserve replaced by Apple's Mac Pro Tower Case unit with interface extension on RAID Controller Card, Dual/Quard Ethernet Gigabit Lan Card & Dual/Quard Fibre Channel 4Gbit Card, as network server connect to local LAN with high performance connection and connect to SAN Storage by RAID connection or Fibre Channel connection directly or throughout the SAN Fibre Channel switch hub, etc....
Since 10 June 2013, new Mac Pro enounnced on WWDC 2013 in San Francsico, we saw a fantacy, amazing new Mac Pro in fall in later 2013.
We are concerning about the networ server and server administration maintain in new Mac Pro, how we can do it mounting it fixing into traditional server rack in our owned Data Center or outsourced Data Center service provider.
We knew two x Gigabit Ethernet; four x USB 3.0, six x Thunderbolt 2 be a extension ports be used for external SAN Storage and extended capacity.
Is it same as Apple's Xserve or Apple's old Mac Pro acceptable RAID or Fibre Channel connection in the Enterprise Companies private network too?
On the other side, we are concerning the new Mac Pro how to fufill mulitple power supply for redundancy to prevent the power supply failure, on network server standard requirements.
IT Manager, Greater China
Peter Tsang

Because of Xserve server is discontinuse so I have migrate it into several Mac Pro servers in Virtual Environment by VMWare vSphere ESXi to maintain more than ten OS X servers in virtualized.
In future or when the Mac Pro servers warranty expired we may considered to replace it by new Mac Pro server in this January/February 2013 on IT budget. Now, we need give up it and find other methods to maintain OS X server virtual environment in non-Apple or non-Mac hardware environment, but this is not accepatble by VMWare vSphere ESXi requirement.
The VMWare vShpere ESXi information center is not allowed or not supporting to install OS X server in non-Apple or non-Mac (for example, IBM server, DELL server or HP server, Cisco server etc...).
However I using Mac OS X and server but I using different band of SAN switch, SAN Storage (IBM and Cisco) in this virtual environment, this is working very well in many years.
No extension, No improvement, No supporting on Mac Pro server in the future in my company.
Why I do not consider the Mac Mini Server?
Because of the single CPU in Qual-core Intel Corei7 only, not in double CPUs 6-core Intel Xeon.
This is not enough CPU performance to maintain more then two or three vritual OS X server runing in one phyical server or failover in several server in disaster recovery.

Macbook pro versus new Mac pro for editing

Hi there,
I have been using my Macbook pro to edit some video I shot on a Canon 5D MarkII. It can be slow...
I was contemplating getting a Mac Pro and tried to find some good info on speed difference between a Macbook pro and a Mac Pro. Obviously RAM, hard drive space will make a difference but I would like to get a general idea. I love the portability of my Macbook pro but could I dramatically increase speed in editing with a Mac Pro? Any good info or links with good info will help!
Best
Paolo

Are you storing your camera footage on the computer's internal system disk?
That will cause problems right away. Your internal drive has plenty to do running the operating system and applications. Asking it to also jump around reading HD footage is overload.
You should at the very least invest in an external FireWire 800 drive for your footage. Depending on your MBP model, you might also have an Express Card slot. This will enable you to use much faster eSATA drives with the appropriate adapter card.
The advantage of the Pro tower is that you can install up to 4 internal SATA drives (up to 8 with a special kit), PCIe cards, dedicated capture cards etc.

New Mac Pro for FCP - should I do 8 cores or faster clock?

I'm setting up a FCP station to replace a 2.3 GHz dial G5 and I'm wondering which would be better - an 8-core 2.26 GHz or a 4-core 2.93 GHz Mac Pro.
Right now the G5 is most likely to choke up when rendering/auto rendering within FCP.
Based on price and the trends in parallel processing, I'm guessing I should go with the 8-core, but that old-school MHz addict in me keeps second guessing. I'd appreciate any advice/insights!

American Flannel wrote:
I heard the new four core mac pro dusts my 2.8ghz 8 core in benchmarking
That's not exactly true. I've been doing some research in the past 24 hours and it seems that the benchmarks (like Geekbench) in which the new 4-core "dusts" the previous 8-core are those which include memory tests. Memory tests will run much faster on the new Nehelems because they use faster RAM.
But the early 2008 8-cores are scoring higher on some benchmarks which score single and multi threaded tasks and don't get hung up in cumbersome RAM tests.
As for the current 4-cores versus the current 8-cores, it seems that the 2.96 GHz 4-cores are beating the more expensive 2.26 8-core procs in single-threaded operations. In FCP, only Compressor is optimized for multithreading, so I'm guessing the real benefits of the extra cores won't be visible until both snow leopard and a new version of FCP.
Why a new version of FCP? Because from what I've gleaned, Grand Central will not make single-threaded operations run better, but will give developers tools to more easily utilize parallel processing. So it would seem FCP will need a significant upgrade to take advantage of what 10.6 has to offer. Don't know if it'll be a .5 or a full version upgrade, but I'm betting on one of them.
Please don't take this as gospel... if I'm wrong about any of this, I'd love to hear a contrary opinion.
Message was edited by: Rey Mo

Best Mac Pro for photography?

I am evaluating now to upgrade my system and I am thinking to buy a powerful MacPro.
I am a decennial Apple user (I have started with a 8600 A/V and Mac OS 6) therefore I have tried more or less every different solutions, according with my needs at the time.
Now, working in photography (Aperture with various plugins, Photoshop) 90% of my computer work I am searching to have virtually zero waiting time, more than stressed from the rainbow spinning wheel of my old MacBook 15" (4 years life).
I am aware any MacPro I will choose will be light-years ahead of my trusted old laptop, but I would like to know from other users in this community if anyone can suggest me an optimised configuration, according with price and performance.
I could go from the base to the top of the range, since I will choose a financing plan anyway, but I don't want to waste money for just "few nanosecond more" in speed. Solidity and upgradable options are good points to consider for me.
Thanks for any upcoming advice.
Have a great day,
Marco

Thank you to all of you for the precious suggestions!
@TheHatter: I have seen the link you gave me, but I am a bit concerned to manipulate the computer so heavily as you suggested, as I am sure it's a good value for money operation.
@CGW3: I had iMacs in the past and thus they are ready made good machines I have found they reach their obsolescence a bit too fast compared to the MacPros, which are much easily upgradable or even set as office server once the processors become too slow for calculation (as I did previously with a G4).
@Grant: thanks for the advice, in fact I wasn't oriented to the iMacs from the beginning...
My initial question was if someone has experienced troubles or at the opposite absolute good performances with a peculiar configuration of the actual MacPros... hence could advice where to put more/less money: bigger processor or more RAM... which is the right balance?
Thanks again,
Marco

New Mac pro for gaming?

Well I bought a MacPro last week and after talking to Apple I am returning it to get a new one. So here's my question:
I would like to use it for gaming as well, so what video card would be best? 2xGeforce or 1 of the new ATI cards
Didn't know which one would be best. I've seen the clock speeds on the ATI and they look great, but been using nVidia for gaming for quite some time and they've always out performed ATI. (At least in the PC world) This is the only thing preventing me from ordering the new one. Also, should I wait for the reviews to come out before ordering?

I was concerned that you had to to the exchange now.
The 8800GT $279 from '08 is fine for games in Windows, or get a PC card of your dreams.
But I see lots of PC users happy with ATI 4870.
http://www.barefeats.com/harper11.html
http://www.barefeats.com/harper19.html
http://www.barefeats.com/harper8.html

What is the best external hard drive for Mac Pro for photography

Hi,
Can anyone recommend a relatively inexpensive portable external hard drive that can transfer large photos between my laptop and the external drive?
I'm thinking something that has Firewire, around 500gb or more and is lightweight.
An absolute must is Dependable. Something that doesn't* break or disconnect on me continually after 6 months.
Any help would be much appreciated!!!
Thank you guys and gals!
Mari

I ALWAYS build my own drive (takes 5 mins). More storage and less money.
Use FireWire not USB.
USB is packet oriented and data transfer is managed by the CPU, Firewire is a streaming protocol and data transfer is managed by the CPU only to initiate transfer, after that, Firewire handles the rest dropping CPU load to nearly 0%.
Put the drive below, in the enclosure at the bottom. Note how the enclosure has a cooling fan, and that the drive is mounted on vibration mounts. I know of no other hard drive enclosure with those features.
A hard drive has three enemies 1) Heat, 2) Vibration, 3) A Windows 7 installation.
http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Intellipower-Desktop-WD20EADS/dp/B001RB1TI S/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1258862242&sr=8-1
http://www.cooldrives.com/ox93saiihadr.html

How well does a new Mac Pro work with Adobe Premiere CC 2014

I'm trying to spec out a new Mac Pro so I can edit 4K footage from a RED camera. I currently edit using Premiere CC 2014. I've heard all kinds of bad stories with the new Mac and Premiere and was wondering if anyone has had a good experience. These are the specs I'm looking at for the mac. Thanks in advance.

Those AMD Dxxx and drivers as well as it may take a product cycle for Adobe if they are interested in the 6,1 customer base.
Dual AMD PCIe 7xxx and above even in dual setups, or of course you can throw one or two nVidia GTX 7xx into those silver "oMP" 2009-2012s (the 2008 just lacks good decent PCIe GPU performance with good graphic cards).
Also the way the nMP will 'share' and throttle to limit itself to 450W and its thermal design so that both GPUs and the processor are not both given full reign (they do when running Windows 8.1 natively - 8.1 because that is the "oldest" version supported with drivers and booting via Apple).

New Mac Pro for photography (raw edition).

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