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Mac Pro: Quad Core vs 8 Core?
Purpose: FCP editing, FCP Motion Compositing & Compressing.
Is the 8 core worth the extra $650 (adjusted for 6GB Ram on both)?
If so why?
Thanks,
jb
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5 Replies
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[Jim Bell] “Is the 8 core worth the extra $650 (adjusted for 6GB Ram on both)?”
Yes. If you charge by time then the time it will save on rendering in Motion and Compressor will pay for itself within a week. Qmaster allows Compressor to utilise multiple cores.
Also it is inevitable that FCP will eventually be a 64 bit application (within the life of your Mac Pro) and current limitations on cores and RAM will be gone so again you basic performance in RT and rendering will save time and make life a joy.
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We have two Octo Cores with 20 gig of RAM each and a Quad Core with 12 gigs of RAM. Bouncing back and forth I feel the Quad core is significantly slower on FCP renders and basic AE rendering. It’s a joy to work on the Octo core and many times we set up a render on the Quad and render on one of the Octo’s.
Surely over the three year life of a computer, $1000 is well worth the extra performance you will get.
A larger engine in a car is less important because you can only go the speed limit anyway. You WILL, however, use every last bit of processing power on any computer you buy.
$1000 over the three year life cycle of the Octo is 27 dollars a month. Get it. And load it up with RAM.
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media Inc.
Video Production and Post
Owner/President/Editor/Designer/Animator
https://www.tiltmedia.com -
Hi Rich,
I actually just ordered a 3.2 quad specifically for ae/premiere and fc. You think im better off with the 2.4 8 core? I have about a day to cancel it. I heard AE was solely on CPU and not cores. Thats why i jumped into the quad with higher for the same price.Thanks,
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Both AE and Premiere Pro are 64-bit native on the mac and consequently are fully multi-threaded. They can take advantage of however many cores or CPU’s you have to offer and all of the memory that you can stuff into it. Inside of AE’s preferences you can set up memory and multi-processing – I highly recommend you look into the help section and Todd Kopriva’s articles on it if you want to really check it out.
FCP uses only 2 CPU cores presently and is not a 64-bit application, though everyone expects it will be in the future.
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A 3.2 quad mac pro with 8 gigs of ram should be a significant upgrade from a powerpc 2.5 quad correct? I mainly use protools so Im thinking id rather have cpu than cores at this point as thats my bread and butter. However the 8 core would probably be better for video which at this times more of a hobby. Thanks for your input!
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