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what is the latest dual Color/Davinci workstation build advice?
Hello,
I have a friend who wants some advice for his current Color workstation as he plans to eventually make the switch to Davinci when the current jobs have finished in house.
If his system could be optimized in any way that would be crucial or actually noticeable in performance for a dual Color/Davinci box.
The storage and monitoring are not really an issue since they have a $6K calibrated Sony display and the office has very fast fibre storage with crazy speed so primarily I am just concerned with the MacPro itself. He also has a wave panel, controlled lighting and a decent room setup, etc. so its really just about making a kick-ass Color/Davinci box to start with and then have the option to expand if need be with a cubix down the line.
current system setup:
MacPro 4,1 OSX 10.6.8 / FCS 3 fully updated as well
2.26 ghz 8-core / 8GB RAM (thinking to suggest he at least doubles RAM)
Nvidia GT 120 (I imagine Color performs slowly for him now)
Aja Kona (obviously a BMD3D+ would be needed)What upgrades or changes would people suggest to have an optimized Color/Davinci workstation? Like i said earlier, he is in the middle of a Color indie feature film job right now so the upgrade would have to wait a few weeks but I want to be sure to steer him in the right direction especially with ATI OpenCL now possible in V8.
Thanks in advance!
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23 Replies
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Forget the ATI, it cant do the fun stuff.
If money is not the problem, ad as many Q4000s as you can.
Minimum one as a dedicated GPU card, or two or three in an extender.
And yeah, there is the GTX 470 which, slightly modded gives you almost double the performance of the Q4000 for half the price.
Its a no-brainer, if you ask me.A slice of color…
DaVinci 8.0.1 OSX 10.7
MacPro 5.1 2×2,4 24GB
RAID0 8TB eSata 6TB
GTX 470 / GT 120
Extreme 3D+ WAVE -
Hey sacha thanks for the reply!
fun stuff – please explain? also how does the 4000 perform with color – i thought 285 or 470’s were better than 4000 for performance in davinci no?
For now the basic Davinci setup is fine as long as it works well for color too and then can be also expanded if a cubix is deemed necessary for this facility.
thank you
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Ok, IF you really want to use Color and AE and Smoke or stuff, a single Q4000 in the main display is your way to go.
Resolves capabilities will be 60% only, but everything else will be cool.
But maybe thats enough to get into it and then you can scale up.
Please refer to the benchmark threads to get a real life overview too.A slice of color…
DaVinci 8.0.1 OSX 10.7
MacPro 5.1 2×2,4 24GB
RAID0 8TB eSata 6TB
GTX 470 / GT 120
Extreme 3D+ WAVE -
A macpro flashed gtx285 works great.
I really cant understand why the expensive fx4000 performs so bad compared to the gtx285. -
It doesnt , its great !
Its the same performance as the 285 for double the price.
Like most Apple products 😉
its all about the CUDA cores…
The 285 has around 250, the 4000 too, the 470 has 450 and the 480 around 1000.
But the 480 consumes too much power and is impractical for normal usage.
And because neither the 285 nor the 470 has minidisplay ports, they also dont work out of the box as primary cards.
Soooo…to make the long story short.
There are two preferred primary cards :
The GT120 for cheap money and ok performance and the Q4000 for a lot of money and great performance for AE, Smoke, Scratch, Maya, Counterstrike and so on.
And then we have three option to help Resolve :
The 285 for 300 bucks and 250 cores, the Q4000 for 800 bucks and, uhhh, also 250 or less cores and the 470 for 400 bucks and almost the double cores.
Do I need to make a drawing ? 😉A slice of color…
DaVinci 8.0.1 OSX 10.7
MacPro 5.1 2×2,4 24GB
RAID0 8TB eSata 6TB
GTX 470 / GT 120
Extreme 3D+ WAVE -
ok so instead of a 4000 with my gt120, it sounds like either a 285 or 470 for mac/flashed will be perfect and i just switch monitor gui to the 120 when using resolve.
great thank you for the help!
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Just to correct you there a bit sacha, the 490 has 1024 cuda cores, because it’s basically two 480s on one card. The 480 is just slight more cuda cores than the 470,
Right now, I’d build a machine around the flashed 470, with maybe a q4000 instead of the gt120 to drive the displays but only of you are doing a lot of color/premiere/smoke etc.
Why smoke, which I think is built on cuda as well, doesn’t support the 285/470 is a bit baffling.
Joseph Mastantuono
Online Editor – Colorist – Post Consultant
Brooklyn based finishing at reasonable prices
917.969.1583 -
Well if you have a 4000 and a GT120 already, switching would be best, yes.
But if you can live with the 120’s performance for everything else. the 470 really give Resolve balls.A slice of color…
DaVinci 8.0.1 OSX 10.7
MacPro 5.1 2×2,4 24GB
RAID0 8TB eSata 6TB
GTX 470 / GT 120
Extreme 3D+ WAVE -
oh no all i have is the 120 right now.
I just looked on ebay and i only see 2 used 470’s as opposed to a bunch of new 285’s.
sorry for the back and forth here I thought I was clear that there is already just a 120 in there and that i wanted to know what is the latest advice considering I want the station to be dual Color/Resolve etc.
thanks again for your time.
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Of course, you could always follow the Resolve for Mac configuration guide. ;<)
https://www.blackmagic-design.com/support/detail/?sid=3948&pid=4448&os=mac&leg=0
Peter
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