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Mac Pro – cores and 2009?
Ok so I’ve been waiting for a new Mac Pro to come out but in the mean time I’m wondering if FCPx even uses all the cores on an 8 or 12 core machine or would it be better to get a 4 core machine with a killer graphics card like a 680 or a radeon 7950?
I see a nice 4 core 2009 with a 5870 for $1400 on ebay with SSD and 16gb ram and usb3 card with a blue ray burner – good idea or should I bite the bullet and get the new mac pro when Mr Jobs decides to finally bring it out with a 7950 card – obviously I’d be in this for $1000+ more. Someone needs to step up the plate and do a definitive test on all of this Mac Pro stuff, BareFeats … come on now ….
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4 Replies
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A new iMac will beat that 2009 with a 5870 quite handily. Plus it come with the best 27″ monitor around built in. Not to mention thunderbolt (think cheaper than an esata getup and faster) and usb 3 which is plenty fast to edit HD off of as well.
X takes advantage of the sandy / ivy bridge architecture that comes in recent imacs. Heck, get a used mid 2011. It’ll be better than that 4 core 2009 (for X at least).
But if you do any premiere or AE, you’ll want the newer imac to take advantage of cuda graphics.
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I didn’t think the 5870 was that bad – in this test, and I think the 680 it talks about is better than the iMac one, it looks OK. Open CL, it thrashes the GTX680
https://gpuboss.com/gpus/Radeon-HD-5870-vs-GeForce-GTX-680
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I think you’ll be waiting a long time for Mr Jobs to bring amything new out. He’s dead.
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Perhaps it’s equal playing field on that gpu level. But is that test fcp x specific? My point is one of the major technologies utilized in FCP X is sandy and ivy bridge. A tech that doesn’t exist on the mac pro.
Under Grand Central Dispatch here https://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/all-features/
As for pure computing processor power, the new iMac is faster as well. 9th fastest mac out there. Only the 8 core macs are faster except for the one 6 core. But just by a tiny hair. Go here https://browser.primatelabs.com/mac-benchmarks If you scroll way down you’ll find the 4 core 2009. It scores around 9000 while the new iMac is around 12000. The 2011 is better too.
As well, you’ll need an expensive eSATA card to hook up eSATA drives. And expensive hardware for broadcast monitoring. Thunderbolt broadcast monitoring via SDI/HDMI can be as cheap as $145. On the new iMac I can get faster speeds off a single usb 3 7200rpm drive than I was getting off my eSATA graid on my mac pro.
Not having a built in DVD burner made me rethink my options and I got a portable usb powered samsung blu-ray burner for $90.
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