New Mac Pro’s and Final Cut Studio 2

[Russell Lasson]

FCS2 will run fine on a single quad-core machine, but I would definitely pony up the extra $800 for the dual quad-core machine. It will extend the life of the machine by at least a couple of years because of the extra processing power. Plus it will hold it’s value much better if you try to sell it later. Not to mention the fact that you can export stuff out of compressor much faster!

-Russ

Russell Lasson
Universal Post
Ridgeline Digital Cinema Mastering
Salt Lake City, UT

[Steve Cohen]

I’ve heard some funky things about how this new system works with monitors.

You have to have the same size monitors, for example both have to be 24″, you can’t have a 24″ and a 30″.

And this is with Apple monitors, so you can only image how they work with Third party monitors.

My local rep told me this and he heard it from his Apple rep.

Just passing it along.

Steve Cohen
Senior Editor
O2 Media Inc.

[Jason Diebler]

I have FCP Studio 2 running on a 1.8 GHz G5 (original power pc) at home, works fine… slow, but fine.

Apple dealers don’t know anything about FCP – unless maybe he works for the Pro Apps dept of Apple – I doubt this sales guy does. Of course he wants you to spend the extra $800.

I’d make a wish list of all the other cool things you could get with your $800… if a slightly faster render time still trumps all the cool plug-ins, software, etc. you could add to your machine – then go with it.

[Michael Sacci]

It will run just fine, especially FCP itself but…

Compressor for one, really like the extra processors now and there is a good chance the next version of the OS and FCS will really take advantage of the extra processors.

So the question is do you have the extra money, if you do, it would be well spent and who give you a little longer life on the system. If you are just coming up with enough money to get the system and understand and can live with a “slower” machine, it will running everything just fine, that includes all the software in the package. So the money buys you better future performance not the ability to run the software.

[Elijah Lynn]

Yeah, right now FCP doesn’t really do much with all the extra processors. You should have seen my face when I looked at the activity monitor when rendering a timeline and saw only 30% of my 8 cores being used. I spent hours on the phone with Apple and they never admitted to me that it can’t use it. I had to find out the hard way.

But, it will in the future. It is so odd, I keep telling myself that the machine will only get faster. Not everyday you hear that!

[Elijah Lynn]

I would get it if you can. It may not be of much value right now but it will be soon. Right now Compressor can use it nicely.

I would get it.

Also.
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My advice is to get an 8 core and the most basic setup you can get from apple/dealer. Do not buy ram or hard drives from them. Do not buy your raid card from them. Get an ATI video card and get the wireless mighty mouse too.

Get a 28″ Hanns-G monitor from newegg for under $400 and also get memory from them too, iRam, 8 GB minimum.

Get a Caldigit Raid Card along with 4 – 1.5 TB seagate drives and put them in Raid 5. This now comes with a bay adapter for another HD that uses the internal sata ports.

Put at a minimum a velociraptor in the extra bay and use that for your OS. Ditch the factory drive and use it as a Time Machine backup with a BlacX HD dock ($40).

But what you realy want is a 80 GB Intel X-25 M SSD for under $400 as your Boot drive. That will make your computer uber fast!!!

The ultimate Workstation would actually have the 64 GB X-25 E ($800). 270 Mbps read/170 MBps write with like 0 latency. This thing is awesome!!! I just put a X25-M in a laptop and it just flies with App/file opening!