Help Buying Mac Pro

[Jeremy Garchow]

Slow 8. Check barefeats.com for speed tests. Ram helps, but nothing makes FCP move faster than more processors.

[Will Salley]

I completely agree with Jeremy. I wish I had even more processors. When encoding or rendering from After Effects, rendering 3D from Cinema 4D, or encoding from Compressor, having as many processors work on things at once is the only way to go. I use two 8-core machines to render with and I need more! One thing, in AFter Effects, you need around 3GB of RAM per processor for best performance. The other apps are better at distributed processing and can have less RAM installed.

Mac Pro 2×2.8 Quadcore – 10.6.2 – QT 7.6.3 – 22 GB RAM – nvidia8800GT – SATA internal & external storage – Blackmagic Multibridge Pro – Open GL 1.5.10 – Wacom Intous2 tablet – AJA io
SONY XDCAM EX3 – Letus Elite

[Paul Kondo]

If you’re doing a lot of h.264 encoding, then you could also consider something like the Elgato Turbo encoder or a Matrox CompressHD card.

https://www.elgato.com/elgato/int/mainmenu/products/Accessories/Turbo264HD/product1.en.html

https://www.matrox.com/video/en/products/mac/compresshd/

I don’t have either of these but I’ve been doing a lot of research in the past week that includes this type of functionality. You can find a bunch of reviews on both and they seem to be highly regarded.

Paul

[Jeremy Garchow]

The elgato is really sweet. If you have an 8 core, though, it’s negligible if you setup a virtual cluster.

For laptops, though, it can’t be beat.

Jeremy

[Roli Rivelino]

Yeah if money’s not a problem go for an 8 core, you can always get more RAM down the line, but swapping your processor, it’s not so easy I believe. I have a quad and wish I had an 8.

good luck and happy editing.

aka Newbie Wan Kenewbie. “The young Newbie, is now a Padawon.”

System
Mac Pro 2.8Gb quad core
8Gb RAM
1x 320Gb 7200 hardrive
1x 1Tb 7200 hardrive
Nvidia Geforce 8800 512mb Graphics card
1x 1Tb external WD ‘My Book’ eSata

Equipment
Panasonic AG-HVX 200
Firestore FS-100

[Paul Kondo]

Jeremy,

I had heard from a friend that had the Elgato that oddly, the better the machine, the less impact it has. Interesting to hear your comment. That’s good to know. I wonder where the break-even point is. Time for me to do some research!

Paul

[Mat Major]

Sorry should have said I only really use Final Cut Studio. I do use motion quite a bit with HD video and am experiencing most of my performance problems using this program.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Paul Kondo] “I wonder where the break-even point is. “

If you have an 8core MacPro, Id’ say there’s no reason for it. I bought it for my laptop for on sight dailies right out of P2Flow and and it’s totally cool in that regard.

https://mxf4mac.com/images/stories/downloads/p2-proxy-creation.mov

Jeremy

[Paul Kondo]

That is pretty slick. At first, I couldn’t figure out what I was watching for on that movie because I don’t know what P2 Flow is. But then watching it all the way through, I was pretty amazed.

I have a 2 x 2.66 Dual Core machine. But I’ll probably get a Matrox MXO2 Mini with MAX on it so I don’t need this Elgato thingy.

I’m almost tempted to buy this thing though just to carry it around from job to job and impress the client!

Paul

[Russell Lasson]

I’ve always been a fan of more processors. Intel is suppose to announce a new processor soon with six cores sometime in March. It’s the Intel i7 970x. If Apple decides to pick it up, that would make their Mac Pro systems have 12 physical processors and 24 virtual processors. You’ll need a bigger screen just to see the different threads when you open Activity Monitor:)

It isn’t for sure that Apple’s going to do anything with this processor, but I think the chances are petty good that within a few weeks from now, there could be a different line up in the Mac Pro category. This could make the current 8-core models less expensive too. If you can wait for mid-March, it might be worth it for you. Then again, you might just be going three more weeks depriving yourself of a nice speedy computer.

-Russ

Russell Lasson
Colorist/Digital Cinema Specialist
Color Mill
Salt Lake City, UT
http://www.colormill.net