MacPro Quad v Eight Core for FCP7

[Rob Grauert]

Here’s an interesting thread I came across not too long ago. (i don’t feel like regurgitating it)

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/1044327#1044360

sounds like you’d want the quad

Robert J. Grauert, Jr.
http://www.robgrauert.com

[Jan Bliddal]

It proberly depent on what you are going to use the software for. A 8 core is faster i you are working with ProRes. The latest ProRes whitepaper on apple.com shows the speed increase when you go from 2 to 4 to 8 cores. It will also be faster in compressor if you setup a prober qmaster cluster on the local machine. You will find tutorial on the web telling you how to do it. I had tried using it on my 2006 version of the Mac Pro and it does work. Can’t remember exactly what to do but think the rule of thumb is. Add half of the cores you have to the qmaster cluster that means 2 on the quad and 4 on the version with 8 cores and 2GB of memory per core dedicated to the cluster. Must say that rule of thumb was made before the release of the 2009 Mac Pro. That version has the ability to split a core into 2 proceses which means you might be able to get 4 instances out of 2 cores and thus might have to ad 4GB memory per core added to the cluster. Read the thread the other poster has posted read the whats new in Final Cut Studio 3 on apples website decide what you want to use i Final Cut Studio and how you will use it, as well as what other things you are going to use your computer for. Then decide.

Let the machine work for you. Not you for the machine

[Erik Lindahl]

I can’t say that much about FCP7 since I haven’t tested it at all my self. Scares reports state that some features do actually use all the available cores of an 8-core system (importing AVC content). In general however the rule of thumbs before have been something in the lines of what you’re saying. A lot of apps have had a hard time throttling the use of more than 2-3 cores of a multi-core system.

It however depends on what you do and how you work also.

– With 8 Cores you can have 2-3 of them used for your FCP render while you run say a compressor cluster jobb in the background at nearly full speed.

– With 4 Cores you can have 2-3 of them used for your FCP renders while you won’t have that much head-room for background operators (given there will likely be some head-room).

– Applications like After Effects utilize multi-core quite well today even if it’s projects and content sensitive (some filters just don’t scale over multi-core). But in general I see my 8-core machine quite throttled here.

– Note that with the added cores you add the RAM requirements also. A minimum of 2GB of RAM per Core should be in the machine (4 Core – 8GB to 16GB, 8 Core – 16GB to 32GB).

– From my experience Motion is shockingly poor at using multi-core for final renders. This might have changed in version 4.0 given I can’t testify to that. Motion is also very GPU-dependant so what ever machine you do get, upgrade to the Radeon 4870 card.

Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
————————

[Will Griffith]

Not sure about FCP7, but going from 4 core to 8 core 3.0ghz greatly
decreased Studio 2 Compressor render times and After Effects CS3
render times upwards to 40%.

[Jim Mcnitt]

Thanks everyone for pointing out a couple of aspects of the Eight-Core Mac Pro that I hadn’t considered, particularly:

– With 8 Cores you can have 2-3 of them used for your FCP render while you run say a compressor cluster jobb in the background at nearly full speed.

– With 4 Cores you can have 2-3 of them used for your FCP renders while you won’t have that much head-room for background operators (given there will likely be some head-room).

Although my budget precludes a 2.93 GHz Eight-core, the ability to run Compressor in the background while rendering in FCP (even if those renders are somewhat slower on a 2.26 GHz Eight-core) makes the most sense for my workflow.

Another factor that I hadn’t originally considered is 3D-software–I use several modeling programs–that CAN take advantage of the Eight-core to speed rendering times which typically now take between 12 and 40 hours for a 30-second for a 600-frame 1920×1080 HD render. Even if I’m rendering on another computer, the ability to include an Eight-Core Mac Pro in a 3D networked render farm could be significant.

Thanks again!
–jim

[Erik Lindahl]

Modern 3D applications tend to scale very linier on multi-core systems. A “slower” 8×2.26 Ghz system (total of 18Ghz) vs a “faster” 4×2.92 system (11,7 Ghz total) would probably win in most cases in 3D rendering. In 2D / Video it’s harder to say. Barefeats did some tests he found:

– In After Effects an 8 Core 2.26 system beats a 4 Core 2.92 system and a 2008 8 Core 2.8 system (RAM is however not identical on the systems)
– Cinebench is also faster on an 8 Core 2.26 system compared to a 4 Core 2.92 system
– On the same system with 4 or 8 cores active the gains are between 0 and 72% depending on application or clinical test.

I could imagine in pure rendering of an FCP timeline the 4 Core 2.92 system would beat the 8 Core 2.26 system in most cases. However, as you say, a lot of workflows benefit a lot from being able to do background renderings. Just don’t go cheap on the RAM 😉

Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
————————

[Michael Glass]

Anantech has a really interesting (at least to me) discussion of Hyperthreaded MacPro’s v pre-Nehalem multicore processors.

The article page is here:
https://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=3597&p=1

Or just the page with the performance/cores/hyperthreading stuff:
https://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=3597&p=8