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12 core worth it?
Hi,
I’m looking at upgrading my Mac system and wanted to know if the 12 core Mac was worth the extra cash when working with Resolve. Where I live (Beijing) it costs approx $6000 USD – that’s before I’ve configured it (cards, increased RAM etc) so it’s a very significant investment.
So my question to those who have a 12 core and are using Resolve is: leaving aside the increased rendering time, what are the other benefits of having the machine?
Cheers
Gil -
6 Replies
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DaVinci Resolve uses GPUs for image processing so extra CPU cores makes no difference there, however, the CPU’s are used for the decompression/compression processes. So, if you use ProRes or RED or DNxHD or other none RGB/pixel file types the CPUs are converting these files from their compressed format to RGB/pixel for the GPU to process.
Dual Quad core works fine, dual six core better if you have $$ and deal with a lot of r3d’s.
Peter -
Well, I’d rather go for a RED Rocket if you do lots of such footage.
Director of the Institute of Media Research (IMF) at Braunschweig University of Arts
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I second that.
We just went from quad core to dual quad and the RED performance increased by 10% 🙂
The rocket on the other hand does magic.
But only when you press play, scrubbing is actually slower than using software debayer. -
Definately go for the 12 core if you work with interlaced 1080i 59.94 material (mainly prores HQ or 444). I find that with only one scope on, my 2009 8 core 2.26ghz Nehalem cannot play back most interlaced 30fps material in real time. As soon as I turn the scopes off, I get a couple nodes of real time. Uncompressed 10bit 422 works the best for me as I usually get 2-3 nodes of correction before playback decreases(and only one waveform on). A little more CPU processing power here would be a great advantage, wish I’d bought the 12 core. I am getting an ultrascope on a seperate computer to run my scopes off of, so that will decrease my load there signficantly in the future.
BTW, 24 frame material is not a problem at all on my system, get a bunch of nodes of playback no matter what format. But interlaced 30 seems to be a a bit of a CPU issue right now. Hopefully there’s codec improvement in the future as I’ve tested the cpu loads for prores decompression in both DaVinci and Final Cut Pro and FCP uses much less processing power to decode a stream of prores than DaVinci does… not sure why.
Chris Hall
Colorist – Basher Films
Pasadena, CA -
I rather spend the additional 1000 on a Ultrascope and a small PC for it.
Until BM gives us a Mac version. -
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