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Mac Pro replacement with higher performance than actual Mac Pro

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May 3, 2018
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Hi there,
I'm Daniel, and I'm totally new to this Mac building thing. I hope to find a way to build a computer running macOS (Sierra at the moment) that's more capable for rendering gigapixel panorama images and virtual tours than my current Mac Pro (Xeon 6-core 3.5GHz with 64GB RAM and AMD Fire Pro D700 6144MB) is.
However, when I use the Buyer's guide and choose the highest-performance components listed there, I end up with something that only has a few Mhz more per core, but also only 6 cores and only 64GB of RAM, which costs more than the Mac Pro would give me back if I sell it now. I hoped for something like 12 cores, 128GB RAM and a bit cheaper... Not possible?
However, maybe it doesn't make sense to compare the bare numbers and the configuration I chose would be already much more capable than my Mac Pro? I don't know, I am not into those low-level performance measures of computer hardware.
The software I use makes full use of the CPU cores and should also be able to use the GPU for rendering.
On my Mac Pro, rendering of a really large panorama image can take an entire day or so. I hoped that I can bring down rendering times significantly in some way.

Also, is the same hardware more performant with Windows than with macOS, when it comes to such RAM-intensive tasks? I often have problems with the 64GB of my Mac Pro being not enough and macOS stops programs because the system is running out of RAM. Panorama photographers using Windows and the same software (Kolor Autopano Giga / Panotour Pro) report that they don't have such problems with 64GB of RAM. Swapping seems to work better under Windows.

Thanks for any good advice! I am kinda clueless currently, not sure at all, if it makes sense to replace that Mac Pro and if yes, with what. ;-)

Daniel
 
For more than 64GB of ram and more than 8 cores you'd want to build an i9 X299 system. Then you can go up to 128 GB and 18 cores if you'd like to. The software you use may be better optimized for Windows than macOS but a system like this would remove any hardware limitations from getting the fastest speeds and render times possible.

Just note that the macOS install and configuration is significantly more complex than for a Z370 / 8700K system. The best bang for your buck would be 96 GB of ram and a 10 core i9 7900X CPU. That would completely blow away the performance of your 2013 Mac Pro. Even More so if you add in a Vega 64 GPU to handle graphics processing.
 
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Thanks trs96!
The Buyer's Guide on this site here doesn't list such components, though. Any advice how I can find components that will be 100% compatible with macOS and the installation methods describer here?
 
Thanks trs96!
The Buyer's Guide on this site here doesn't list such components, though. Any advice how I can find components that will be 100% compatible with macOS and the installation methods describer here?
You could read KGP's very detailed X299 How to build your own iMac Pro guide. If you copy his hardware choices of motherboard, CPU, ram and Graphics card you can be sure that it will work when you follow his guide. It's an extremely long read and will take even longer to understand it all if you are new to this.

https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...c-pro-successful-build-extended-guide.229353/
 
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