Is anyone running Houdini on the new Mac Pro machines? I'm curious to hear folk's opinions, system configs etc. How well does Houdini make use of multicore systems, in other words how much am I gaining by going with 8 or 12 core system over 6 core?

I've got the 8-core Xeon model with dual 6 GB AMD D700s, used mainly for illustration and 2D graphics production.



While I haven't attempted any objective measurements, viewport performance and interactivity have been fine. Better than I'd expected, given Apple's notoriously poor OpenGL [sidefx.com] standing. Houdini tends to remain smooth and responsive with dense meshes and deformations that cause other applications to struggle, like Modo and Rhino.



Many cooking operations use almost all of the available CPU capacity, but others like IsoOffset sometimes use just one core. Mantra always performs admirably.

The machine has been well-suited for my purposes, but for serious simulation and rendering [boxxtech.com], you may want to also consider some of the more flexible options [distrowatch.com] out there.

Good info, thanks

The majority of OSX GL problems are on the mobile GPU drivers - Intel and AMD Radeon Ms. The discrete card drivers are much more stable (Quadros, FirePro D's, Radeon 5770/5960/7970, etc). Rather strange since Apple's system lineup uses far more mobile than discrete GPUs.

My R2D2 unit with 32GB and dual 700 Firepros runs H fine. No real issues. Also runs several other 3D apps, e.g., Modo, Substance and Vue with no problems. I will probably double down on the memory to 64 GB when I get a chance but it isn't a priority.

I also have the macpro 6core with 2xD700 but with bootcamp to run Windows because I'm stubborn Houdini generally runs fine although there are a few GPU bugs because the bootcamp drivers are apple's responsibility instead of AMD's (As far as I understand).

Will H14 Build 361, or 395 launch on OSX 10.9.5? I know the min specs jumped to 10.10.3? at some point after release?

I'm on nMP with D700's.

Kfinla
Will H14 Build 361, or 395 launch on OSX 10.9.5? I know the min specs jumped to 10.10.3? at some point after release?

I'm on nMP with D700's.

Depending on your hardware, you may need to upgrade to 10.10.3. Apple bundles their OpenGL implementation with their OS releases and doesn't appear to backport any fixes (unlike Windows/Linux, where the graphics driver has the GL implementation and can be installed separately). This is the reason why we bumped the OSX version requirement to 10.10.3; too many users were having severe stability issues with 10.9's graphics.

I don't recall offhand if the D700 was one of the problem GPUs, but if you experience stability or graphical corrupt, then an upgrade to 10.10.3 will likely solve them.

OK thanks.. so basically YMMV.

I'm not gonna get a prompt telling me I have to upgrade my OS to even launch.

I did have severe issues with Build 201 on 10.9.4, but 10.9.5 made a huge difference.

No, we don't currently post any messages if you don't meet the minimum recommended specs (unless you don't meet GL3.2, in which case Houdini won't run at all; but that's not the case with any card shipped in the past 7 or so years).

The improvement between 10.9.4 and .5 makes sense; the Mac Pro w/D700's was fairly new at that time.