Mac Pro Question

DaVinci Resolve

Mac Pro Question

Posted by Omar Godinez on July 7, 2011 at 1:35 pm

Fellow Colorists,

Some background;

I used DaVinci systems at various facilities in Dallas, TX from the Classic in1984 to 2K Plus in 2005. I went out on my own in ’05 and built my successful grading business with Final Touch and Color (freelance on SCRATCH & Lustre). I’ve read BMD’s Resolve config guide, Reduser and certain forums on Creative Cow.

I grade RED, Alexa and many HD formats for broadcast, digital projection, DVD/Blu-ray, Web, etc. No film outs or 3D.

I understand Resolve uses CUDA GPUs and 1-3 is ideal. Especially with noise reduction.

My question is; Do I really need a 12-Core MacPro, or is my 2010 8-Core 2.42 ‘Westmere’ with BMD reccomended RAM sufficient for what I do?

Thanks!
Omar Godinez
Dallas, TX

Omar Godinez replied 14 years, 10 months ago 10 Members · 14 Replies
14 Replies

Rohit Gupta
July 7, 2011 at 1:49 pm

A 2010 8-core should be just fine. 12-core gets you more performance in dealing with codecs which use the CPUs, but it’s not necessary. Even a 2009 8-core Mac Pro will do just fine.
Omar Godinez
July 7, 2011 at 1:54 pm

Rohit,

“12-core gets you more performance in dealing with codecs which use the CPUs”

Please elaborate.

Omar
Kevin Cannon
July 7, 2011 at 2:00 pm

The 12-core mac pro does a admirable job of de-bayering RED footage at half-res and “good” quality at 24fps. I don’t use a RRocket card or transcode to DPX, so if that is your exact situation, the difference might be significant there.

KC

prehistoricdigital.com
hardworkingpixels.com
Omar Godinez
July 7, 2011 at 2:12 pm

I’m waiting to see what new Mac Pros come out with Thunderbolt and all. I’m even reluctant at this point to get an expansion slot box.

Omar Godinez
Dallas, Tx.
Sascha Haber
July 7, 2011 at 2:36 pm

Yeah, just wait, the new ones are around the corner.
But, here my prediction :
16 cores, but smaller form factor.
Thunderbolt, but maybe only three PCI 16x lanes.
Its back to old times where you have to have external boxes to run AVID 🙂

A slice of color…

DaVinci 7.1.2 OSX 10.6.7
MacPro 5.1 2x 2,4 24GB
RAID0 8TB eSata 6TB
GTX 285 / GT 120
Extreme 3D+ WAVE

http://www.saschahaber.com
Cristina Perez
July 7, 2011 at 4:16 pm

Hi!
I’m wondering if someone can help me a little bit with my suite’s configuration
I’m running da vinci 8 like this

osx 10.6.8 mac pro 2x 36gh
8gB ram
raid 5 8Tb esata 6Gb/s
quadro 4000 + ati hd 5770
hd extreme 3D + wave

I’m trying to test the machine with apple pro res 4444 and i don’t have real time playback with 0 nodes, I have 20, or 23 fps but I know it must be more. I tried with red media 4k debayering at quarter resolution and that is impossible.

Its because I’m in raid 5 instead raid 0?

More Ram would be a big change for my configuration?

Would be very grateful if someone could help me with this

On the other hand I have the wave directly connected to the CPU and the color response is not immediate … any suggestions?

Thanks!!!

Cristina Perez
Freelance colorist
Rohit Gupta
July 7, 2011 at 4:32 pm

Your monitor connected to ati gpu?

I would try switching to raid 0 next and dropping ram to 6gb
Jonathon Lee
July 7, 2011 at 5:41 pm

I use RAID 5 via Fibre Channel on an Infortrend Eonstor 8 & 16 bay and I get realtime playback. So RAID 5 is not inherently problematic.
Margus Voll
July 7, 2011 at 5:48 pm

esata does not mean a lot of speed.

try with 4x internal drives in raid 0.

you should use also at least 1 tb drives x4 in mac

—

Margus

https://iconstudios.eu
Ben Starkey
July 7, 2011 at 7:34 pm

Rohit makes an excellent recommendation on dropping the RAM to 6. Alternatively you could increase to 12 GB RAM. Blackmagic is very specific on their RAM recommendations for Resolve.

Ben Starkey
Colorist

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