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New Mac: 8 core Vs. 12 core
Hello Again!
Looking to edit HD coming from HDSLR’s & any format a client might have. I’m using FCP & CS4. Looking to upgrade to CS5 & give Premiere a try.
The 8 core starts at $3,500. The 12 core starts at $5,000.
This will be my only machine, so transcoding & rendering time are important to me, since I’m doing low budget stuff… Any opinions on these brand new, untried machines?
Thanks!
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3 Replies
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More and more apps are and will take advantage of more cores. Compressor can do virtual clusters (you need at lest 2GB/core of RAM. Programs like Magic Bullet Grinder (processes Canon clips) can encode one clip per core at the same time so a 12 core will process 12 clips in the same time as 8-core will 8 clips.
Eventually FCP, Motion and Color will take advantage of multiple cores (hopefully summer 2011).
So if you have the money the system stays stronger for a little longer.
But all that said the new 8-core will be able to do anything you throw at it. So there is not a right or wrong choice here. But you need to look at a system and not just pieces. I would not spend the extra $1500 and not get a good video monitoring card and monitor.
My 2 cents.
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I’m looking at this decision myself. What i know from the past is I bought one of the first MacBook Pro machines. It was great as my only edit machine with Final Cut Studio 3 and an MXO2 for monitoring but reached its peak when it maxxed out at 2Gb RAM limiting the use of Color, Motion and Soundtrack Pro.
Impossible question, I know, but can you conjecture any future limitations on a 12-core machine?
robert
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I feel a bit like I am dealing with voodoo & marketing propaganda with deciding on a new Mac…
I may have gotten off to a bad start by importing data from my laptop to my iMac i7. I may try to redo everything, but I have an RMA # from apple which will expire soon & I have kind of decided that even if I double the actual speed on the iMac, that that will not be fast enough & I am scared about keeping an expensive machine that won’t do the job.
On my laptop I can watch Youtube & Vimeo videos streaming at 720p. My new iMac stalls on everything but 360p.
I have been reading that using the extra cores depends on how new (or how well written) the software is.
My old dual processor G4 really shined using OSX & I am leaning towards a new dual processor machine with the more expensive video card.
My brain doesn’t understand all this stuff & I need to save some space in my head for my upcoming battle with formats & trans-coding, etc., which have me stupefied!
I used to edit on tape years ago & I’m just getting back into video after 15 years.
For the record, I was getting pretty good at OS9………………………………………………………
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