Thanks to the Other World Computing's test lab, we have some benchmark results for the 'late 2013' Mac Pro 2.7GHz 12-Core. And thanks to a 'Remote Mad Scientist' and long time, trusted friend, we have results for the same tests from a 'mid 2010' Mac Pro 2.66GHz 12-core.
CPU GRAPH LEGEND
12c 2.7GHz nMP = 'late 2013' Mac Pro Xeon E5-2697 v2 @2.7GHz 12-Cores with 16G of 1866MHz DDR3
12c 2.66GHz MPt = 'mid 2010' Mac Pro Xeon X5650 @2.66GHz 12-Cores with 24G of 1333MHz DDR3
Both were running OS X Mavericks.
CPU CRUNCH TESTS
Cinebench R15 -- Render 3D Model using all cores. (LARGER number means FASTER CB Rating)
Geekbench 3 -- Here is the overall score for 64-bit performance combinging Integer, Floating Point, and Memory (HIGHER score means FASTER.)
BONUS: GPU TESTS
The Radeon HD 7970 is as close as you can get to the FirePro D700. However, since we were not able to test the Radeon HD 7970 in a 12-core Mac Pro, we used a 6-core Mac Pro instead to host it and the other Mac Pro tower GPUs featured in this section.
GPU GRAPH LEGEND
Dual D700s = 'late 2013' Mac Pro 12-core with dual FirePro D700 GPUs
Dual R7970s = 'mid 2010' Mac Pro 6-Core with dual Radeon HD 7970 GPUs
Single 7970 = 'mid 2010' Mac Pro 6-core with single Radeon HD 7970 GPU
Single 7950 = 'mid 2010' Mac Pro 6-core with single Radeon HD 7950 GPU
Single 5870 = 'mid 2010' Mac Pro 6-core with single Radeon HD 5870 GPU
Dual 5770s = 'mid 2010' Mac Pro 6-core with dual Radeon HD 5770 GPUs
Single 5770 = 'mid 2010' Mac Pro 6-core with single Radeon HD 5770 GPU
LuxMark 2.1 is an OpenCL benchmark that renders scenes of various complexity. For this round we used the default Sala scene (488K Triangles) and rendered using all available GPUs, but GPUs only. (LARGER number means FASTER in Thousands of Samples per Second.)
Final Cut Pro X 10.1 features "optimized playback and rendering using dual GPUs in the new Mac Pro." We applied the Gaussian Blur effect to our 1080p two minute sample video. (SMALLER number in Seconds is FASTER.)
Next we applied the Water Pane effect to our 1080p two minute sample video. (SMALLER number in Seconds is FASTER.)
Motion 5.1 -- We rendered the RAM Preview of Atmospheric - Open sample project. (SMALLER number in Seconds is FASTER.)
INSIGHTS
When it comes to CPU crunching, the 'late 2013' Mac Pro 12-core is faster than the 'mid 2010' Mac Pro 12-core in both single and multi-core tests.
We featured LuxMark is an OpenCL benchmark since it not only renders the scenes with mutliple GPUs, but can render with ONLY GPUs. Surprisingly, the dual Radeon HD 7970s were able to generate more samples per second than the dual FirePro D700s. Of course, a single Radeon 5770, 5870, and 7950 are more typical of what most of you have in the 2010 and 2012 Mac Pro towers.
Both Final Cut Pro X 10.1 and Motion 5.1 are "optimized playback and rendering using dual GPUs in the new Mac Pro." For the Mac Pro tower, we included every AMD GPU from the basic factory Radeon HD 5770 to the flashed Radeon HD 7970. Notice how the pair of each of those extremes were helped by the new optimizations.
Many of you have asked whether your mix of pro apps require a 12-core Mac Pro or if a 6-core or 8-core will do the job just as well. In our tests with the 2013 Mac Pro 6-core with D700s, it actually completed the FCPX and Motion tests faster than the 2013 Mac Pro 12-core with D700s. Once we receive our custom order 2013 Mac Pro 8-core with D700s, we can better determine the 'sweetest spot' in the 2013 Mac Pro multi model lineup for such apps as FCPX, Motion, DaVinci Resolve, Photoshop, Lightroom, Aperture, etc.
