Octocore configuration

[Jeff Carpenter]

A) Upgrade the video card to the ATI X1900 w/512 MB VRAM. After your 4GB of RAM, that’s probably the best $250 you’ll put into the machine.

B) 4 GB of RAM is fine. Be sure to buy from someplace like Crucial.com instead of from Apple. Actually, I suggest buying four 1 GB sticks from Crucial and adding them to the two 512 sticks the computer comes with. That will give you 5 GB for $472. Going with Apple you’d get a total of 4 GB for $700.

Those 2 bits of advice are solid. I think everyone would recomend them. These next bits are purely my OPINION and it’s very easy to argue against them. I’m not suggesting them, just putting them out there for you to think about.

C) Personally, I went with the quad-core instead of the octo-core. Why? Well you’ll save $700 and the difference in your editing will be zero. The 2 times you’ll notice a differnce is when you render and when you compress for DVD or the web. So it comes down to your work. Do you do 2 to 3 hour event videos? Half hour shows? 30 second spots?

Remember, with Final Cut you’ll get good real-time previews without having to render everything. So you can work through almost everything before you have to render. That’s more of a last step when you’re finished editing. Also keep in mind that the octo-core isn’t twice as fast as the quad-core. More like 1.4 to 1.5 times as fast. Faster, yes, but once again, consider the payoff vs. the money.

So think about the advantage vs. the cost. Yes, time is money, but if all your projects are short, and you only render when you’re done, you might not save that much time. Or maybe you will, it’s up to your workflow.

C) Having the 250 GB hard drive for the system is good. Best to keep it small. But instead of the 750 GB secondary drive, consider getting two 500 GB drives (again, from someplace other than Apple) and RAIDing them together into a single drive. Sure, it might just be for graphics and music, but you’ll get a speed boost from it and everything will be that much faster. Downside: You have twice the risk of a drive failing. Backups become even MORE critical when working like this.

D) Two monitors. Have you used Final Cut much yet? I ask because I find that dual-monitors are much less necessary. I work on an Avid system with dual-monitors and I feel like I need it there to stay organized. I have a single monitor on my Final Cut System, however, and am just fine with it. Everything’s much more tab-based in Final Cut. I feel that I can stay better organized in a smaller space. And if you get the 30″ monitor you still have plenty of room to srpread out without going to a 2nd monitor. I dunno, I just find dual-monitors annoying. They’ve been necessary for years, but with the larger LCDs these days and Final Cut’s interface I feel that I can finally leave them behind. Others disagree. Just my thoughts.

[Mark Maness]

I agree with Jeff on everything except the memory situation…

I have heard that if you want optimal performance, you really need 8 gig. 4 gig is fine BUT do not mix 1 gig bars with 512 meg bars, it will only make FCP run slowly and force you to render more than you want.

[Jeff Carpenter] “Personally, I went with the quad-core instead of the octo-core. Why? Well you’ll save $700 and the difference in your editing will be zero. The 2 times you’ll notice a differnce is when you render and when you compress for DVD or the web. So it comes down to your work. Do you do 2 to 3 hour event videos? Half hour shows? 30 second spots?”

I don’t fully agree with this staement. Motion does take full advantage of processors and graphics card. Besides, if you have Shake or plan to purchase Shake, it uses processor support ONLY, not grpahics cards.

[Jeff Carpenter] “So think about the advantage vs. the cost. Yes, time is money, but if all your projects are short, and you only render when you’re done, you might not save that much time. Or maybe you will, it’s up to your workflow.”

This is very true, but be careful to not shoot yourself in the foot by saving money where you shouldn’t.

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com

[Jeff Carpenter]

Wayne,

Do you know of any place that explains the mixing of 1 GB and 512 chips? I’ve never heard anything about that and was wondering if you had an online source for it.

As for the 4 GB vs. 8 GB, that can be broken down even more for leemce. 4 GB is enough for Final Cut. Any more than that and you won’t see any difference in your video work. What you WILL gain with more RAM is the ability to run many other programs at once without having to swap memory as you switch between them.

So although 4 GB is enough for Final Cut, yes, 8 GB is probably a good idea if you’re always concurrently using Photoshop, DVD Studio Pro, Compressor, After Effects, etc. And since that includes of us, 8 GB is not a terrible idea. It’s not as critical as that video card upgrade, but it’s still a pretty good iedea if you can get it.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Jeff Carpenter] “Do you know of any place that explains the mixing of 1 GB and 512 chips”

https://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304492

[Jeremy Doyle]

8 Gigs of ram is recommened for the octo so you can have at least 1 gig of ram per core.

If you’re using after effects a lot then you’ll really notice the difference according to the reports at barefeats.

[Lee Mceachern]

Thank you all very much. I really appreciate the thought you all put into it. And Jeff, particularly, the time you spent giving me guidance is a gift. This truly does help me in my selections. Much appreciated!

Lee

[Ben Holmes]

[Jeff Carpenter] “C) Personally, I went with the quad-core instead of the octo-core. Why? Well you’ll save $700 and the difference in your editing will be zero. The 2 times you’ll notice a differnce is when you render and when you compress for DVD or the web. So it comes down to your work. Do you do 2 to 3 hour event videos? Half hour shows? 30 second spots?”

I see where you’re coming from Jeff, but is $700 such a lot of money in a Pro setup for a system that IS faster – albeit not twice as fast? Also, the info we have so far on ProRes 422 suggests that rendering scales with processor cores, so it’s POSSIBLE that the octo-core is quite a bit quicker in this new format. We’ll wait and see, obviously, but it would weigh heavily on my mind if I were buying for HD at this particular moment (oh – I am buying..)

[Jeff Carpenter] “Remember, with Final Cut you’ll get good real-time previews without having to render everything”

Not once you start applying decent filters (other than CC). I think render times have a real effect on what you can work with filters-wise. Sometimes it’s not worth the wait to see what effect a filter has, so it gets dropped. I think the RT elements of FCP are overplayed – only good for basic motion and basic filters.

Just my personal perspective – like I say, see where you’re coming from…

Ben

Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd

EVS & FCP specialists for live broadcast.

OB Server 1 HD – Mobile FCP editing done right.

[Mark Maness]

[Jeff Carpenter] “Do you know of any place that explains the mixing of 1 GB and 512 chips? I’ve never heard anything about that and was wondering if you had an online source for it.”

Look at this from Apple.

https://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304492

It shows that for best perfomance, you need to keep your memory at the same sizes all the way through your memory risers. And from personal experience, mixing manufacturers can cause issues, too.

When I mixed the Apple 512s with 1 gig bars, I had to render my timelines completely. I had no realtime support in FCP. When I removed the 512 bars, my realtime performance came back.

[Jeff Carpenter] “So although 4 GB is enough for Final Cut, yes, 8 GB is probably a good idea if you’re always concurrently using Photoshop, DVD Studio Pro, Compressor, After Effects, etc. And since that includes of us, 8 GB is not a terrible idea. It’s not as critical as that video card upgrade, but it’s still a pretty good iedea if you can get it.
“

This is why I suggest 8 gig IF you can afford it. On a regular basis, I may use FCP, Motion, Photoshop, AfterEffects, and possibly Illustrator while editing. 4 gig works great, but if you use lots of programs to get the job done, more is always better.

BUT, now, when it comes to the new OctoCore systems. I’ve been told by Apple and several folks at NAB who have been using these for a little while (Beta Testers), that using the new computers with 8 gig is its optimal memory configuration. This is because each chip of four processors need at least 4 gig to run efficiently. Now, they also said that 4 gig will run fine but if you really need performance and speed, 8 gig is the way to go.

[Jeff Carpenter] “It’s not as critical as that video card upgrade, but it’s still a pretty good iedea if you can get it.”

I will agree with you completely. ALWAYS get the best video card you can buy. With the new OctoCore systems, you should look at the ATI X1900 XT at the bare minimum. Motion needs all the graphics cards you can give it.

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com

[Mark Maness]

[Ben Holmes] “Not once you start applying decent filters (other than CC). I think render times have a real effect on what you can work with filters-wise. Sometimes it’s not worth the wait to see what effect a filter has, so it gets dropped. I think the RT elements of FCP are overplayed – only good for basic motion and basic filters.”

BINGO!

Ben hit the nail on the head. I have this issue myself. I’m just lucky that I don’t work with clients on a regular basis and have very tight deadlines.

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com

[Andrew Kimery]

Just to toss in my 2 cents as well since I’m debating between an 8-core and a 4-core machine.

Even though some single instances of apps don’t show an earth shattering (if any) speed increase in an 8-core machine vs 4-core machine, if you have multiple CPU hunger apps open (like rendering something in AE while working w/multiple streams in FCP) then the 8-core will give you more head room before things start getting sluggish and unresponsive. And the advantages of multicores is still pretty untapped by most apps so even though the difference isn’t huge now, it could be down the line when Apple’s apps are (hopefully) more “core aware.” Also if you plan on keeping this machine a long time an 8-core machine should have longer legs than a 4-core. But if you typically upgrade your machines every 2 years or so then paying the 8-core premium now may not be worth it.

Obviously I’m leaning towards the 8-core, but the price difference is definitely making me think long and hard about it.

I don’t think there is really a “wrong” machine to get, but like Jeff said, the “right” machine depends a lot on your workflow. If you are looking at a straight up editing, only machine you probably won’t see any advantages from the 8 core. But if this machine is going to have to wear different hats (AE/Motion work, DVD encoding, etc.,) having the extra cores may be worth the money, especially once more apps become multi-core aware.

-A