In After Effects, previewing comps with just a handful of effects can be laggy, so typically, I preview comps in a half or a quarter quality when Im trying to work super-fast.
New Pro Desktop 2019 Update For YearsAnd demand for such a machine is well and truly pent up: Apples last Mac Pro came out in 2013, featuring a daring cylindrical design that the company was unable to update for years because of thermal issues.After much consternation about the future of the Mac, Apple admitted it needed to start all over with the Mac Pro in 2017.Two and a half years later, were looking at one of the most precisely and cleverly engineered desktop computers ever made.There are no stock configurations aside from the it-has-to-start-somewhere 5,999 base setup, and the machines wont be sold in the companys retail stores. Apples expectation is that customers will configure almost every Mac Pro to order, all the way up to a top spec with a 28-core Intel Xeon W processor and two AMD Radeon Pro Vega II Duo GPUs that hovers near 54,000. Simply figuring out which Mac Pro to review in a way that reveals something interesting has been a process. So we ended up buying our own Mac Pro. Apple did seed reviewers with the Pro Display XDR, which we also reviewed; you can find that here.). And we needed to do all of this knowing that we wouldnt just send this machine back when the review was done, like we do with every standard review unit. And of course, The Verges own art and video teams make illustrations and motion graphics for our site and YouTube all day long. So we called in a few friends, let everyone use the Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR to work on their various projects, and had them report back. ![]() We also added Apples new 2,000 Afterburner card, which is a dedicated processor called an FPGA that accelerates decoding ProRes video files in certain apps. And for comparisons sake, we also bought a PC workstation built around a newer AMD Threadripper processor. Put aside the cheese grater jokes, and just look at it: there just isnt another PC that is this precisely engineered. That pattern of cooling vents on the front and back is instantly recognizable, the ports on the top are really useful, and the whole thing is ridiculously quiet in operation: Apples gone to great lengths to vary the speed of the fans constantly so that they dont cause any harmonics or rumbles. It is a shockingly quiet computer for the amount of power it contains. Screws are held in place with springs so they dont fall to the ground when you loosen parts. There are numbers printed on the interior to guide you through disassembly step-by-step. Apple could have shipped a generic ATX tower with off-the-shelf parts inside, and people would have bought it to run macOS; the company went above and beyond with the design of the Mac Pro. My favorite little flourish The Mac Pros single USB-A port is on the inside of the machine because a lot of pro apps require a hardware DRM dongle to operate, and Apple wanted a secure port to tuck those out of the way. ![]() Thats it. All in all, its fair to say that Apple has built one of the nicest tower PCs ever made. What mattered to us was whether people could make use of all that extra power to do their jobs. Like many production houses, Vox Media is an Adobe Creative Cloud shop, and our expectation was that wed be able to crank on Photoshop and Illustrator and manage heavy editing workflows in Adobe Premiere and After Effects. We also do color work in DaVinci Resolve, and we stress Cinema 4D and Pro Tools quite heavily.
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