Anyone running Maya (2014) on new MacPro and is it working... we are a completely Mac studio and have been for almost 10 years... need to make decisions on new hardware or a studio-wide switch to Linux
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Solved by tony.su. Go to Solution.
The solid state drive is an obvious... but the rest of the new MacPro is a completely different animal. We've been using Apple special-build hardware for 10 years now for our Maya work and every new OS or slightly upgraded hardware configuration has had issues. We always use top of the line configurations. Ordered some of the newest 12 processor servers early last year (OSX 10.8) to beef up our older xServe render farm rack and couldn't even load the Maya software. In workstations, the nVidea FX 4xxx graphics cards have changed with each new release and require workarounds.
No doubt, the new MacPro is hot. But it's rebuilt from the ground up, AMD graphics replacing the nVidea graphics and internally Apple's processing approach will probably require Maya software engineers to rewrite a good portion of the code to take advantage of what's in there.
Autodesk has not and will not give any input when asked... so that means there are issues they don't want to talk about yet... more than just a short list of a few bugs.
The top configs of the new MacPros also are about $2K more than the older ones... so short of just buying one and installing Maya to see what happens, I was hoping someone else had already tried.
Can't seem to get that kind of experienced input... unless you are an anonymous Autodesk software engineer leaking secrets?
I understand your pain. One of the reason I use a PC vers a MAC is simply due to limitation when problem solving. After reading your comment I decided to do some research on compatibility with AMD's top-of the line FirePro W9000 graphic card used in the new MAC PRO. I wanted to start with the Video Cards simple because there is no data about the ability to upgrade the cards. One of my biggest issues with MAC is AMD. Why do they keep using this as a standard graphic card when almost every Video Editing and CG software program out there is making tools for Nvidia. So big red flags with almost every software program I use (Mari, Nuke, Adobe After Effects) all had issues with performance on the New MAC PRO. Maya actually scored fairly well when using Viewport 2.0 but the Nvidia K5000 card was faster. So after further research I cannot recommend the new MAC PRO due to the limitation of the Graphic Processor. I admire the innovation of the product but I feel it is not a wise investment in the every growing CG industry.
The Apple MacPros have always had nVidia graphic cards to use with Maya... wether Apple built it for you or you put it in yourself... the fast (and expensive) FX4xxx series... the new MacPros don't have that option since the config is not standard and AMD is apple's choice now.
Macs are very good in the production pipeline and memory management for a render server is old-style unix-like, much better than windows... if you use macs in your pipeline, windows is a major downer as an option... the better route is linux, which follows the same unix-like environment... the only issue is adobe software which doesn't have a linux port...
Will wait for a release of some qualification info from Autodesk...
Many of these pipeline integration you speak of have been resolved with Windows 8.1. Also the issues with RAID performance has been resolved. I am a part owner of a small CG Studio. I am also in charge of about 70 percent of CG and Video Production. I was a software developer for several years (mainly C++). We look at hardware formulas every time we need to build a new workstation. Linux is an excellent OS for render farms but, for a production workstation it is not the best choice. People put MAC Unix base platform on a pedestal but, I have had the new OS X crash more times than I can count. If you understand the architecture of how both Unix and Windows 7 manage memory they are very similar. This is why it is very difficult to completely lock up a windows 7 or 8 machine. The program will just fail and the isolated memory is dumbed Operating system remains stable. At one time this is what made Unix OS so amazing but, that just isn't the case anymore. You keep looking for Autodesk to give you some kind of answer. We live in a world of information at our finger tips. It is our job to educate ourselves enough to know how to look and utilize the information itself. I found four areas on the web of people using Maya 2014 on the new MAC PRO. I took this information and came to the conclusion that MAC PRO will be a good workstation computer for MAYA but when I started to add in programs that I use on day to day basses (NUKE, MARI, Adobe Products, and CUDA based plugins) MAC PRO with no flexibility for the GPU is a bad investment. I also should add my workstation is a 15,000.00 dollar computer dual Xeon (16 solid core 32 mt) - 128 gb of ECC RAM - Quadro 5000 + Tesla - 8 TB Raid. Once the next generation of hardware presents itself as being almost twice as fast we will build a few workstation and move the older ones to be used in the render farm or as dynamics work horses for Fluid or Massive Population sims. The idea is not to buy to much of one generation of technology.
When Maya 2014 released, Mac OS 10.9 wasn't released. So we we didn't test it on Mac OS 10.9, and there isn't Mac OS 10.9 in Maya system requirements list.
You can try it on Mac os 10.9. But we don't know if there is any issue on it.
Yes... that I understand... we had issues with OSX 10.8 on new servers that would not even allow install of Maya2013... but then 2014 woked fine. Was more concerned with the hardware / graphic card side of the new MacPros and any issues there... we always have a few bugs to deal with in the new OS releases, but graphic cards are a concern now since the new Macs have gone a different route.
Thanks for the post Tony, I will assume Maya2015 may be what we need to wait for before proceeding with the retooling of the studio.
hi Tom - i'm running Maya on the new mac pro can. no good news, i'm afraid. running maya under 10.9.5 is currently causing system-wide graphics instability and drawing errors. i'd say give it a little longer before transitioning to this new hardware platform.