2.93 Quad or 2.26 Octo Nehalem MacPro

Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

2.93 Quad or 2.26 Octo Nehalem MacPro

Posted by John Lukas on February 27, 2010 at 5:22 pm

I was looking to purchase a new MacPro. I am primarily a video editor but occasionally do sound editing and mixing. At the moment I do not do much effects heavy work, but that could change in the future. Also, I will be using a great deal of footage from the Panasonic HMC150 camera so I will be using the AVCHD codec (or ProRes conversion of it) on fcp7 which I have read can be problematic without the right system.

I am leaning towards the 2.26 Octo-core but is it wise to sacrifice processor speed for more cores and ram.

so do I get a

2.93 QUAD with 8 GB RAM and an ATI graphics card

or for about $500 more do I get a

2.26 OCTO with 16 GB RAM and an ATI graphics card

Rich Rubasch replied 16 years, 6 months ago 4 Members · 3 Replies
3 Replies

Russell Lasson
February 27, 2010 at 5:44 pm

[john lukas] “2.26 OCTO with 16 GB RAM and an ATI graphics card”

I think this is a better option. The more cores the better:)

-Russ

Russell Lasson
Colorist/Digital Cinema Specialist
Color Mill
Salt Lake City, UT
http://www.colormill.net
John Fishback
February 27, 2010 at 7:33 pm

I’m with Russell. More cores and memory is best. Your Octo might well outperform the Quad. While FCP doesn’t use all the cores, if you search the Cow you can find how to create a virtual cluster to speed up Compressor. That can result in a large speed enhancement while encoding. Also, if you can spring for the ATI 4870 it’ll be worth it as it will speed up Motion and give better performance with certain FXPlugs.

John

MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.8 QT7.6.4 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor, ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5
FCS 3 (FCP 7.0.1, Motion 4.0.1, Comp 3.5.1, DVDSP 4.2.2, Color 1.5.1)

Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO & 192 Digital I/O, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN
Rich Rubasch
February 28, 2010 at 3:35 am

Also I think that the Quad is a single chip with four cores and the Octo is a dual-chip with four cores on each…big performance boost.

Also the 16 gigs of RAM alone will make a huge difference in overall everyday performance.

But only $500 more for both the Octo and the extra 8 gigs of RAM? Sounds a little good to be true. I don’t think you can even buy 8 gigs of Ram for the Octo for under $500.

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media Inc.
Video Production and Post
Owner/President/Editor/Designer/Animator
https://www.tiltmedia.com

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