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If you were getting a new machine what would you get?
I don’t really understand a lot of the gear and technical side of building an edit system, so I appreciate any unbiased opinions on this matter (something I don’t anticipate to get from the MAC Business store near me). I’ve fully transitioned from Final Cut Pro to the Creative Cloud and hope to never look back, but my Mac Pro is really starting to slow down on me. Its time for a new system, but I am very conflicted as to what path I should take to get there.
On one hand the new Mac Pros are out but there are some obvious drawbacks:
– they lack the ability to cannibalize my Kona LHe card due to lack of PCIe slots (need this for playback monitor and sound board interface)
– they lack space to connect a CUDA card to (in theory) help render times
– I would need a new KVM switch I believe or some Thunderbolt to DVI adapters (I set up my work station with a PC I use for leisure and the MAC for work with a shared 2-monitor array, shared keyboard, shared mouse) and don’t know if that would affect video quality any
– The “Mac Tax” where I would probably pay a bit more for the same level of performance from the hardwareOn the other hand I have a bunch of Final Cut Pro projects on hard drives floating around with my clients, and prospective clients, that might show up again at my office one day in the future. Being able to open up the old projects for quick changes would be exceptionally useful.
Looking to spend no more than $12,000 … what system would the much-more-technically-savvy-of-the-bunch-than-me get?
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6 Replies
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Very much like you except for kona needs. I don’t know how you will get around it, but perhaps they will bring something new out at NAB. I’ve recently bought an imac 27″. 2gb nvidea, 16Gb RAM. Running parrallels for Windows. I too have FCP projects, but have moved to Pr cloud. It seems as if the FCP legacy has us locked into Apple, but frankly i like the mac os and feel it’s worth the price. There are lots of converter options for thunderbolt, and for PCIe to USB 3.0. Check out OWC.
Al
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So I went yesterday to our local Mac Business site and talked with everyone, and left feeling uneasy but a little more comfortable than I was before. Looks like my $12,000 budget is going to get blown out of the water a little bit, but here’s what I’m looking at getting:
Mac Pro 2.7GHz 12-Core Intel Xeon E5
1TB PCIe-based Flash Storage
Dual AMD FirePro D700 GPUs with 6GB of GDDR5 VRAM
Cost: $8241Crucial 16GB DDR3 SDRAM Memory (Replacing the stock ram) $210.00 x4 = $840.00
PROMISE Pegasus2 Series 8-bay with 8x3TB SATA HDD (Thunderbolt connection) = $3419.05
Blackmagic Design UltraStudio 4k Thunderbolt capture = $945.00
Basically $14500 total with Apple Care, DVI to Thunderbolt connectors (so I can use my old monitors), misc accessories. Under $1000 to get deck control and playback out of the machine through Thunderbolt w/ the Black Magic device is pretty great deal, vs getting an external box and using my old Kona. I lose the CUDA card but I imagine the new processor is so beefy I’ll see an increase in render time anyway, and eventually (hopefully) Adobe will really support OpenCL rendering. Problem is, I don’t really know much about the hardware to know if this makes sense, but I feel a little better about it after pricing out some PC machines that come in at the same power only more expensive.
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Chad, can you hold off for six months? IMHO, I think it would become much clearer, and I wouldn’t sell off your MacPro just yet. Adobe hasn’t yet benchmarked the new ATI cards, likely are still working on performance improvements and some folks on MacWorld that did some preliminary tests did not show more than an 8% performance increase in the new machines over a top of the line iMac. I think holding tight if you can might prove to be worth it, as the bugs get worked out of the system by all the 3rd party folks. How old is your MacPro? Maybe you can simply buy late model and move all your stuff to it?
Al
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If you want the whole story on the new MacPro here is the article https://tinyurl.com/otwabgq
On programs that use the GPU’s gains have been more than substantial, for instance optimized FCP X 10.1, Photoshop, etc.From the Macworld article:
However, the new Mac Pro handily beat the iMac—and every other Mac we’ve ever tested—in our Final Cut Pro X test, the iPhoto test, the HandBrake test, the Photoshop tests, the Cinebench CPU test, the Mathematica test, and several graphics-engine tests. It also crushed most other Macs in GeekBench 3’s multi-core benchmark.The Mac Pro’s Final Cut Pro X performance was especially impressive, as it finished our rendering test in half the time of the next-fastest Mac, and about a quarter of the time it took on two 2012 Mac Pros (a quad-core and a dual six-core). An Apple demonstration to Macworld staff was likewise striking, as it involved Final Cut Pro X displaying 16 different angles of 4K Multicam video simultaneously, while live-rendering 4K video with multiple, complex effects applied. This demo was, of course, designed to show the Mac Pro in the best light, but it’s a demo few computers could do at all. Similarly, the user-run Final Cut Pro X site fcp.com published its initial tests based on a Mac Pro similar to ours. In one test, the site put a Red Raw 4K clip in a 4K project and added 18 effects; the clip rendered and played in real time without dropping frames
Jim Wiseman
Sony PMW-EX1, Pana AJ-D810 DVCPro, DVX-100, Nikon D7000, Final Cut Studio 2 and 3, Media 100 Suite 2.1.4, Premiere Pro 5.5 and 6.0, AJA ioHD, AJA Kona LHi, Avid MC, 2 Hexacore MacPros 3.33 Ghz 24Gb RAM GTX-285 120GB SSD, Macbook Pro 17″ 2011 2.2 Ghz Quadcore i7 16GB RAM 250GB SSD, G5 Quadcore PCIe -
Good news. I guess if you have the paying work in 4k footage or fx it could pay back that $14k investment quickly in rendering time turnaround. Will be interesting to see comparisons with Windows HP workstations maxxed out. TB 2 may make it worth it? But Comparisons are all, “Apple to Apple” 😉
Al
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14K can get you a maxed out Dual Xeon E5 24 Core/ 48 Thread PC that is heavily configured and still upgradable in the future. No Way the new Mac Pro can compete with that unfortunately. I suggest you consider this.
Eric-ADK
Tech Manager
support@adkvideoediting.com
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