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Buying a Mac Pro – thoughts on this spec’ please?
Hi all – I need the advice of the community.
My 5 year old IMac can’t run as fast as me any more. It was great when I was learning but now I’m more demanding and have loaded it with plugins. So it lags, hangs and throws me out.
Time to upgrade. I do broadcast commercials and short form corporate web video work – plus the occasional 30 minute documentary. Mostly in HD but starting some 4k too.
With this in mind, when asked, Apple suggested the following spec for me:
2.7GHz 12-core with 30MB of L3 cache
16GB (4 x 4GB) of 1866MHz DDR3 ECC
256GB PCIe-based flash storage
Dual AMD FirePro D500 GPUs with 3GB of GDDR5 VRAM eachNow I admit I don’t know the significance of which of the above is best for editing – so I was hoping you would?
I’m trying to achieve seamless movement between projects/loading effects (lots of plugins)/loading the titles. I want to add an effect and playback the timeline without lag and stutter. I’d like it not to have a fit when I quickly move in and out of compound clips, Faster rendering of some effects would be good too.
How do you think the spec above would cope and would you suggest any alternatives?
Thanks in anticipation.
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4 Replies
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A fully loaded 5k iMac costs about the same as a low end Mac Pro. Many people are using them and seeing good performance. Also, the Mac Pro is getting a little long in the tooth. I’d either go with the iMac or wait until the next gen of Mac Pro.
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Intel and AMD are just about to release new chips so the time to buy isn’t now but could be soon.
A 5K iMac on the other hand is a great machine and would be a huge upgrade over what you have.
Mac Pro’s are great, it’s what I have but I do a lot of Red transcoding which is CPU and GPU intensive so I use all the muscle.
The iMac can do 4K editing as if it were HD, and the screen is the best you can buy at the moment.
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Also, WWDC is right around the corner. It wouldn’t be imprudent to wait until it comes and goes to see what gear gets updated.
Noah
FCPWORKS – FCPX Workflow
FCP Exchange – FCPX Workshops -
Just saw Noah’s link and decided to see what’s up at the WWDC this year.
Went to the splash page and started laughing.
For the Apple dev communities and the general tea leaf readers, that has to be one of the most simply awesome splash page designs I’ve ever seen.
Let the guessing games begin!
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