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Quad Processor Machine Speed
Ok, for months I’ve said I’m waiting for the new Intel Desktops before I upgrade my edit suites, and that’s still true. But I ran into a situation two days ago where a Draft Render of an After Effect animation I’m working on took over 26 hours to render on my trusty Dual 2.0 machine. When I switched it over to HD resolution it was looking to be in the 42 hour range, and I don’t have that kind of time with these deadlines.
So I purchased the Quad yesterday, put 2.5 GB RAM in it (I bought 4 but two sticks don’t work), moved AE over to it and it rendered the full HD version of the animation in under 4 hours. This one job alone pays for the machine so even if I just use it for this one job and sell it in a few months, it’s worth it.
Just wanted to pass that along for anyone who does a LOT of heavy renders in either FCP or AE. The speed even surpasses what I thought it would do. I’m still running the Dual 2.0’s for both editing workstations as they work beautifully there and they’re incredibly stable.
Also picked up a really nice Viewsonic 20″ widescreen monitor with DVI connections at Costco for under $400 for the thing.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.comDirector, “The Rough Cut”
https://www.theroughcutmovie.comNow Posting “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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18 Replies
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Man…like you I have the dual 2Ghz and edit HD. My AE renders are getting out of hand…as are my DVD compressions. Looks like I need more work for pay for a Quad.
Most the work I get though is editing on the Avid, and OTHER people’s equipment.
sigh.
Shane
Alokut Productions
http://www.lfhd.net -
This is very helpful real world information. Thanks Walter.
Tom
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……and I thought my 2.7 G5 was fast. Used to take almost 13 hrs. to encode a 2 hr. DVD on my G4 dual 800 and now it takes about 4 hrs. (or less) on my G5. Wondering now how long the same encode will take in about a year or so from now on the latest desktop MacTel machine. 15 minutes? 🙂
– Don
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Great news Walter
this is amazing
I am planing on getting a quad with a 7800 4.5 GB of ram 1 TB internalLooks like it is going to be smoking
DAVE at Movies Rock in Toronto
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Wow. That’s pretty cool. Did you use that Gridiron Nucleo plug in?
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G5 Dual 2Ghz <> 4GB RAM <> FCP 5.04 <> Kona 2
ATTO 42XS <> Huge Systems 4105 Fibre
OS 10.4.2 <> QT 7.0.4 -
[JeremyG] “Did you use that Gridiron Nucleo plug in?”
I have no clue what that is.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.comDirector, “The Rough Cut”
https://www.theroughcutmovie.comNow Posting “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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It’s a plug in that basically tunes after effects for even faster renders, the faster your computer, the faster it works. It’s supposed to scream on the Quads. I know you just shaved over 30 hours off of your render, but I thought you might be interested since you do a lot of AE rendering.
https://www.gridironxfactor.com/products/nucleo_overview.asp
https://www.gridironxfactor.com/products/nucleo_benchmarks.asp
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[JeremyG] “It’s a plug in that basically tunes after effects for even faster renders, the faster your computer, the faster it works.”
cool! thanks for sharing. I’ll look at that when I get back from NAB or maybe while I’m out there.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.comDirector, “The Rough Cut”
https://www.theroughcutmovie.comNow Posting “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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The quads are great for Maya as well.
Nearly twice as fast as dual 2.5.-will
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Thanks for the news Walter. I’m adding a new edit suite and was unsure about the quad with the intel boxes coming out soon. The render benchmarks I’ve been seeing with FCP 5.1 show a Mac Book Pro 2.0 smoking an existing G5 Dual 2.0. But I can’t wait for the new intel boxes and I ordered the quad yesterday. I’m going to be running Final Touch on the new quad and it sounds like the speed benefits will justify the price.
Here’s a quote from a German FCP site (machine translation) comparing 5.1 to 5.04 on PowerPC and Intels:
One note at the begin: the update takes time. The software is shipping with 7 DVD’s. It takes about one and a half hour to install. If there is already an old Final Cut Studio you will not need to enter a new serial. If you install just a part of the Software you have to enter the shipped new serial. So owner of an older FCP studio will have 2 serial numbers.
The first launch show nothing new with the programms. To compare the speed, we have put a DV-clip in the timeline, setting the speed to 10% (apple key + j) and set on backwards. Then the we applied the wind filter with 100%. We measured the render times and compared them with different Macs. The results were more than asthonised!
Our test Macs were:
a) Apple G5 Dual 2Ghz, 1.5GB memory, NVIDIA GeForce 6600 LE 128MB
b) iMac G5 20″ 2.1 GHz, 1.5GB memory, 128MB graphic board
c) iMac Intel 20″ 2GHz Core Duo, 1.5GB memory, X1600 128MB graphic board
d) MacBook Pro 2GHz Core Duo, 1.5GB memory, X1600 128MB graphic boardThe first surprise was that FCP 5.1 is rendering much faster than version 5.04. On a iMac G5 with FCP 5.04 = 4 min 48 sec, after the update only 3 min 52 sec. It was similar with the PowerMac G5. Here was the result 4 min 10 sec vs. 3 min 18 sec.
The big surprises came as we hit the apple – r key on the Intel iMac: 53 sec! We couldn’t belive that so we used the MacBook Pro. And 59 sec!
http://www.final-cut-pro.de/stage/_inhalte/berichte/019_fcp_ub_test.shtml?navid=1
Cheers
John Christie
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