MacPro 8 core vs 12 core

[Noah Kadner]

What sort of 4K material? 4K H.264 from a GoPro or 4K ProRes for example? In either case I’d suggest maxing out the GPU before pulling the trigger on the 12-core. That’s what FCPX uses more. You should always get the most powerful machine you can afford for longevity’s sake, nothing is “too fast.”

Noah

FCPWORKS – FCPX Workflow
Call Box Training

[Darren Roark]

For editing, the 8c is the one to get. For multiple simultaneous rendering or transcoding tasks, the 12c is the one to get.

The clock speed on the 8c is higher than the 12c so overall editing tasks will be faster. For transcoding jobs, the 12c can do 24 individual simultaneous tasks, the 8c can do 16. Unless you are transcoding dailies with quick turnarounds often, the 8c performs really well.

And what Noah said, the D700s are a great deal especially compared to the PC equivalent price. FCP X will use as much GPU as you can throw at it.

[Lance Bachelder]

I just got the 6 core but made sure I got the D700’s. It came with 32GB RAM but may upgrade to 64 in the future – I’ll see how this next show goes – a Red Dragon feature.

I also got the OWC Thunderbay 4 which was a great buy at 1199.00 for 16TB – reads about 525MB sec. in RAID 5.

It was at a Vegas premiere that I resolved to become an avid FCPX user.

Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Downtown Long Beach, California
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1680680/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

[Tom Sefton]

We’ve got a couple of the 6 core machines with D700s. They are fine for 4k, as long as it is ProRes material. r3d files need dropping to 1/2 resolution in premiere and in FCPX you can just about get by.

Having said that, with Dragon footage at 25p is useable for fast editing, but the resolution it can display is poor.

Transcoding times for 4K Red footage to 4K ProRes tend to be around 20fps in RedCine X, which means an hour of footage takes around 1hr20 to encode to ProRes at full debayer.

Hanging on as long as possible before we buy another as WWDC could throw out some new models somewhere along the line, which would be v cool.

Co-owner at Pollen Studio
http://www.pollenstudio.co.uk

[Mitch Ives]

Noah and Darren pretty much covered it. The eight usually makes the most sense… get the D700’s… and 64GB helps overall since we tend to use multiple programs. The SSD choice is a personal one. I have the larger one and put frequently used things on it.

Of course if you don’t get a decent array, as Lance pointed out, you’ll lose out on performance. I have a TB2 that gives me 950 on the read and write… makes a big difference

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill

[Rick Lang]

Lance, would be great to hear how you feel about the 6-core machine. Considering the faster CPU, it’s throughput in terms of CPU cycles is only about 12% less than the 8-core, and any single or dual-threaded process will run faster. I’m also wIting to see if Apple indicates they have an update to the CPUs and GPUs later this year as I’ll wan to process the 4.6K files from the BLACKMAGIC URSA Mini.

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB

[Lance Bachelder]

So far I’m liking it a lot. We start shooting the new feature next Monday so I’ll know quick whether I can cut native r3d or do proxy workflow.

I studied all the benchmarks on barefeats.com and decided the D700’s, 32GB RAM and the 1TB storage were most important for me. Having 3.5Ghz for editing also very cool. I really wanted the 1TB version so I had room for the FCPX library and cache for maximum speed. It’s really making a difference so far.

I bought from the Apple refurb store and saved about $800 over BTO.

It was at a Vegas premiere that I resolved to become an avid FCPX user.

Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Downtown Long Beach, California
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1680680/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

[Rick Lang]

Thanks, Lance. I think we’ve established that having the terabyte of internal flash gives a good boost to performance and I agree with the rest of your configuration but we shall see how the 6-core performs. Hope is does your work adequately!

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB

[John Murphy]

Hi Noah,
I will be working with Pro Res. Looks like the 8 core W/64 gig and Dual D700 w/2x6GB and 1 TB flash is the way to go.

Thank You to everyone for responding,
John M.

[Lance Bachelder]

Yes we will – I hope I’m right in thinking the faster 3.5Ghz will speed up my editing vs. the additional cores that really help with renders…

It was at a Vegas premiere that I resolved to become an avid FCPX user.

Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Downtown Long Beach, California
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1680680/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1