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nMP or iMac for 4K
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I did a test today comparing 4K performance between my Mac Pro and my son’s trash can. He’s running an 8-core/64GB RAM/D500 with a Promise Thunderbolt RAID (4 drives). My machine is an 8-core Mac Pro tower with a Sapphire 7950 card and the media drives are two internal drives striped RAID-0.
As a common denominator I used DaVinci Resolve. I had a mixture of media with various codecs. On his machine it had no problem playing 3 layers with PIPs and a mix of codecs and basic color correction. On my machine, a single stream of 4K ProResLT or XAVC (no color correction) won’t play smoothly. Granted, I think a lot has to do with the faster Promise drive, however, it’s pretty clear that the trash can definitely handles this content better.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Well your son’s machine is close to $7 grand plus storage. The big bummer using an older Mac Pro, even if it’s updated with SSD’s, fast GPU, 12 cores etc. is it still has so many bottlenecks compared to the nMP. PCIe 2.0 slots, 1333 RAM, antique architecture etc etc. But, you can get NEAR nMP performance with the right upgrades, all it takes is plenty of cash…
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 -
[Gabe Strong] “For what it’s worth, I get 25 seconds on the Bruce X test, but I have no idea if that is any
good compared to the new Macs or not. It sure seems to edit fast in FCP X to me, but I will admit I’m not
sure what ‘good’ is.”My 2015 top-spec iMac 27 does about 17.1 sec on the BruceX test. I’m not sure how revealing that is — it’s a narrow GPU-intensive benchmark. My 2013 top-spec iMac 27 was twice as slow on BruceX but in actual FCPX editing it felt about the same. There may be a perf. penalty when doing bit block transfer operations on the ultra-high-res retina screen.
FCPX is pretty fast on a late-model iMac 27, but it still can’t smoothly edit multicam 4K H264 without transcoding to proxy. In some cases I transcode even for single cam. It is faster than Premiere on the same hardware but what’s the difference if you have to transcode on both Premiere and FCPX for smooth 4K editing? With Premiere that is now a built-in feature, and while it seems to transcode slower than FCPX, once it’s done the performance is lightning fast.
In general I’d recommend the nMP for production work, despite the aging design. It is a dilemma for people contemplating a purchase in the very near future. Hopefully within a few months we’ll have more info on possible iMac and nMP updates.
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The problem I have with benchmark tests is that it doesn’t necessarily parallel day to day editing operations. Sure, it’s an indication of the speed of some hardware, but it’s not a direct equivalent of how ‘fast’ an application responds to things like adding effects, pressing play, saving versions, all the really little things that add up during an edit day.
I routinely edit 4K material, and I miss my tube’s when I’m editing away from the office as anything else isn’t as responsive as the tubes. I can get way more full quality realtime with the tubes, even with equivalent storage speeds.
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[Oliver Peters] “I’m concerned about the GPUs. So far I’m steering away from the D700, because those seem to be the defective ones that burn up. Any update on that front?”
Been flogging one with D700’s since day one… no issues. Among my friends, none of us have ever heard of this. You sure about that?
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
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[Oliver Peters] “Unfortunately the biggest negative for the nMP is the lack of any functional upgradability. As evidenced by the fact that we are discussing a several years old tower proves the fact that future expansion has its value over planned obsolescence.
“I suppose that depends on whether you need to upgrade. Our 8-core, fully loaded nMP with a fast TB2 RAID hasn’t needed any upgrades.
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
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[Mitch Ives] “You sure about that?”
The Deadpool team burned through several of these machines. I confirmed issues with the AMD folks at NAB regarding the D700 in the form factor the way Apple has implemented these GPUs. A simple Google search will turn up quite a few hits related to overheating and/or video glitches when maxed out, particularly rendering 4K from Resolve.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Mitch Ives] “Been flogging one with D700’s since day one… no issues. Among my friends, none of us have ever heard of this. You sure about that?”
We have 4 nMPs. We’ve had to have 3 service calls resulting in hardware replacement (only one was a GPU replacement, IIRC). I’m definitely the outlier here, and Apple has always done the right thing and fixed them, but each repair does take the machine out of service for a few days.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
Well that sucks. Haven’t seen it with the 4K here, but I haven’t tried 4K with Resolve
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
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