New Mac Pro advice

[Steven Nichols]

I have another question regarding the card. Do you think I should get a better card than the ATI for After Effects, and if yes what would you pick ? Thanks again.

[Walter Soyka]

[Steven Nichols] “I have another question regarding the card. Do you think I should get a better card than the ATI for After Effects, and if yes what would you pick ? Thanks again.”

After Effects itself renders on the CPU, not the GPU, so your graphics card won’t impact AE performance.

There are a handful of third-party plugins (like Sapphire, Colorista II, Knoll Light Factory, Optical Flares, and FxFactory Pro) that can render on the GPU, but I’ve never seen any comparative data on performance with different graphics cards. I think it’s largely irrelevant with multiprocessing, anyway.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Steven Nichols]

I thought you would get an improvement with Open GL regarding previews in After Effects ?
I was thinking about the nVidia GeForce GTX 285…

[Walter Soyka]

[Steven Nichols] “I thought you would get an improvement with Open GL regarding previews in After Effects?”

I strongly recommend disabling Open GL support. It has a couple limitations which I consider show-stoppers. From the Render with OpenGL page in the documentation:

Important: Because not all features of a composition can be rendered with OpenGL—and because some features that can be rendered with OpenGL are rendered with different results—you may only want to use OpenGL rendering to accelerate previews and to provide faster rendering for non-final results.

Note: You cannot use the Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously multiprocessing feature while also using OpenGL to render RAM previews or render for final output. The Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously feature works by using background processes on multiple CPU processor cores to render frames.

The GTX 285 (now discontinued, may it rest in peace) would be a great card for DaVinci Resolve or Premiere Pro CS5’s Mercury Playback Engine — nVIDIA’s CUDA technology is incredibly powerful — but ATI is preferred for FCP and Color. It doesn’t make a difference to After Effects, so I think it makes sense to look at the rest of your pipeline and make your decision accordingly.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Steven Nichols]

Thanks again. So what would be the benefits or the ATI 5870 over the 5770 ?

[Walter Soyka]

[Steven Nichols] “Thanks again. So what would be the benefits or the ATI 5870 over the 5770?”

You’re welcome.

See this benchmark which compares the ATI 5870 and 5770. The 5870 is performs slightly better in OpenGL, and a lot better in OpenCL. It makes no difference with the current version of Color.

In terms of hardware, the 5870 is a more powerful card than the 5770, but the current software releases aren’t really taking advantage of the extra processing power. Maybe the next new “awesome” release of Final Cut Studio will leverage Apple’s OpenCL technology, but that’s all still conjecture at this point.

I think that we are just at the beginning of a lot of innovation in processing on GPUs. Outside of Apple, there’s a lot of cross-industry momentum behind nVIDIA’s CUDA, but Apple doesn’t even sell an nVIDIA option in the Mac Pro anymore. Right now, vendors seem very siloed in their GPU preference.

My recommendation is to buy for your workflow today and budget to swap out your graphics card in a year or two if your needs change.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Steven Nichols]

I would need to clarify something. I know right now FCP is 32-bit so I am aware of the 4 GB RAM limitation. But I was told today that a 12-core machine will use all them cores for rendering in FCP. So after all a 12-core should be a good choice for FCP ?

[Jerry Hofmann]

FCP can use multiple cores, so I’d suggest that the more the merrier… however the more important thing coming down the line is FCP 8… it’s likely to use all those cores to MUCH better advantage. It’s likely a full rewrite of the software from 32 to 64 bit for starters, and it’s likely going to be written in native OS 10 code where FCP 7 and earlier wasn’t. So the more power you have the faster the renders in any case. Buying the beefier card now is also a smart move. It’s only 200 bucks more now instead of 450 later… GPU rendering times will greatly improve with this upgraded card.

I’d say a 12 core now with that upgraded card and 12 gigs or more of RAM is a strong investment for the future, even if it’s not that much faster than say a 6 core machine now. Down the line, you’ll be happier with it as the software becomes more demanding.

Jerry

Apple Certified Trainer, Producer, Writer, Director Editor, Gun for Hire and other things. I ski. My Blog: https://blogs.creativecow.net/Jerry-Hofmann

DVD:https://store.creativecow.net/p/81/jerry_hofmanns_final_cut_system_setup

8-Core 3.0 Intel Mac Pro, Dual 2 gig G5, AJA Kona SD, AJA Kona 2, Huge Systems Array UL3D, AJA Io HD, 17″ MBP, Matrox MXO2 with MAX Cinema Displays

[Steven Nichols]

OK thanks yall. I am now ready to order the 12×2.93 cores, ATI 5870 and I think 32 GB of RAM.
I will post some tests when I’ll get this monster.