Any reason I shouldn’t tray upgrade my 2.93 octo 2009 Mac Pro to a 3.46 ghz to boost Premiere performance?

[Andy Patterson]

Why not get a PC if you use Premiere Pro CC?

[Chris Wright]

define performance.
there’s render speed, playback speed, conforming speed, warp Stabilize, rendering previews, etc.

if you look at puget’s premiere cpu page, you’ll actually see that the more expensive processors don’t do any better at realtime playback than cpu’s several years ago. yep, its a market trick again. And h.264 is still horrible almost always requiring proxies.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Premiere-Pro-CC-2017-1-2-CPU-Comparison-Skylake-X-Kaby-Lake-X-Broadwell-E-Kaby-Lake-Ryzen-7-969/#LivePlayback

[Bryan Roberts]

Thanks guys for your insights. Interesting article. While there doesn’t seem to be a huge gain between those processors listed, I’m guessing going from a 2.93 Octo to 12 core 3.43 would be fairly sizable woudn’t you think? For me performance is all about real-time playback quality, ease of dealing with more compressed 4K codecs, and maybe the biggest is export speed.

I’ve been cutting on a Mac for 13 years and every single client I have is Mac based. Almost every final delivery asks for ProRes. I simply don’t want to deal with the inconvenience of being the lone PC user in my pool and having things not work smoothly when we’re working with files back and forth on tight deadlines. It’s the same reason why I tried to switch from iOS to Android. Great phones now, Android is a wonderful os… but all my clients have iPhones and when a director is in India or wherever the hell they may be shooting and they ask to hop on a FaceTime call before they go to sleep, it’s very inconvenient for me to say, sorry can you download skype and use it instead. I know it sounds cheesy but when you’re freelance and have great clients / directors etc. – you want everything in your relationship to be in their language so there’s a lesser chance that you start having people start whispering other editors in their ears between projects 🙂

EDITOR
Commercial / Feature / Doc
http://www.BryanRobertsEditor.com

[Greg Janza]

[Bryan Roberts] ” For me performance is all about real-time playback quality, ease of dealing with more compressed 4K codecs, and maybe the biggest is export speed.”

I know you don’t want to switch platforms but you should at least investigate your PC options. I say that as a former 20 plus year Mac user. When I wanted to upgrade my edit system for smooth 4k editing I initially thought in terms of upgrading my mac but then soon realized that the Mac offerings with fast cpu and powerful GPU were extremely limiting. There’s an embarassment of riches available to you on the PC side with numerous GPU’s, CPU’s, Thunderbolt 3 enabled motherboards, etc.

I Hate Television. I Hate It As Much As Peanuts. But I Can’t Stop Eating Peanuts.
– Orson Welles

[John Pale]

I upgraded my home system from a 2.23 x 8 core to a 2.93 x 12 core. Currently have an Nvidia GTX970 GPU.

This system outperforms the Mac Pro trashcan I use at my day job. I got the 12 core CPUs cheap and I did the upgrade myself. It was very much worth it, in my opinion.

You are upgrading to even faster CPUs, so the performance should be better. My one worry on what you are doing is power consumption and heat issue. If you are using multiple PCIe cards, a beefy GPU and maxing out the RAM, you might run up against what the Mac Pro tower was designed to handle.

[Bryan Roberts]

I’ll keep my pc options open when we have a clear next Mac Pro option next year.

Re heat issues – does anyone know: is it more efficient for cooling to run my system with the side panel on or just completely remove it? I have mine off now but considering the extra heat I’ll be dealing with, want to make sure I’m not creating an issue by trying to be clever and leaving the side panel off!

EDITOR
Commercial / Feature / Doc
http://www.BryanRobertsEditor.com

[Brent Marginet]

I always think that removing the side panel is a bad idea because you stop the designed front to back airflow in any system.
I could very well be wrong but that’s my opinion.

I’m one of those who upgraded to the Dual Hex 3.46ghz CPU’s and I just run MacsFanControl to deal with the extra heat.

\”MY MEDIA/PROJECT MOTTO: If you think three copies of your Media or Projects are enough. Take a moment to place a value on them and then maybe add two more.
Hard Drives are now stupidly cheap. A RE-SHOOT AND YOUR TIME AREN\’T.\”

[Bryan Roberts]

Thanks Brent. Any issues with the 3.46? I just pulled the trigger this afternoon. $645 from Ebay with free shipping and they just ship me the entire tray, no need to swap out. I guess prices are falling since the new new mac pro has been confirmed from Apple… or maybe because we’re talking about a computer upgrade for an 8 year old system 🙂

EDITOR
Commercial / Feature / Doc
http://www.BryanRobertsEditor.com

[Brent Marginet]

No issues at all.
I even have a GTX-980Ti GPU and my Power Supply has never had an issue.

\”MY MEDIA/PROJECT MOTTO: If you think three copies of your Media or Projects are enough. Take a moment to place a value on them and then maybe add two more.
Hard Drives are now stupidly cheap. A RE-SHOOT AND YOUR TIME AREN\’T.\”

[John Pale]

Definitely don’t keep the panel off. The case is designed to direct airflow in specific ways.