Understanding FCPX under the hood.

[Walter Soyka]

[Bernard Newnham] “You don’t need them, just the current “sweet spot” Core something. At the time of writing, it’s the Core i5-3570K .”

I’d suggest the Core i7-3770K. i5 doesn’t do hyperthreading.

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

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
[Herb Sevush] “at least 4 16x PCIe slots plus another 2 to 4 slower slots…”

How does that work with Bernard’s Core i5 “sweet spot”?
Isn’t that part of Jeremy’s problem as well?

[Herb Sevush]

[Paul Dickin] “How does that work with Bernard’s Core i5 “sweet spot”? Isn’t that part of Jeremy’s problem as well?”

I don’t understand that comment. Multiple 16x PCIe slots are not leading edge, they are the norm in anything other than a Mac. They are the “sweet spot.”

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Paul Dickin]

[Herb Sevush] “I don’t understand that comment. “

Hi
Bernard’s “sweet spot, with Walter’s amendment, doesn’t even give a quarter of what you want 😉
But they are PCIe 3.0, if you swap your cards in for newer v3.0 versions…

Quote:
Core i7-3770K PCI Express Configurations 1×16, 2×8, 1×8 & 2×4
https://ark.intel.com/products/65523

Presumably the commas are ‘or’ alternatives – 1×16 or 2×8 or 1×8 & 2×4.

[Bernard Newnham]

[Paul Dickin] “Bernard’s “sweet spot, with Walter’s amendment, doesn’t even give a quarter of what you want ;)”

One shouldn’t get too pedantic about the “sweet spot” bit. There are a huge number of choices, so if an i7 is preferable, and there’s the budget for it – well, go for it. Pick the amount of memory you want, and the shade of GPU. There aren’t just a few expensive options, there are thousands of cheaper ones. My sweet spot bit is just a middle ground pick. I know it works for ordinary HD editing, with a few layers, some sounds tracks and a lower third or two, because my machine here, which is set at a sweet spot months old now, does the job perfectly well.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Why didn’t my car pick work??

Bernie

[Shawn Miller]

[Bernard Newnham] “I always wonder why people bother with that stuff – I it think might be “gear porn” stuff that gives them a thrill.

Getting the very fastest machine at any point in time might be good hobby, but it isn’t good business. Those processors they were talking about cost more even than an iMac, and give a few percentage points of speed gain.”

I agree with most of what you’re saying here, Bernie. A fast(ish) single proc machine with a fast HDD sub system and beefy(ish) GPU is more than enough for many creative pros. For users needing as many CPU threads as they can get, an i7 based system isn’t going to cut it though. For tasks like fluid/physics simulations or muti-threaded rendering, more cores = faster output. Why not just send out to the render farm you might ask? Because you need to do full quality test renders before farming out whole sequences, and assuming you do a lot of test renders before final output (as I do), saving a few minutes per frame can add up to hours of valuable project time saved (over the life of the project).

Shawn

[Chris Harlan]

[Shawn Miller] “saving a few minutes per frame can add up to hours of valuable project time saved (over the life of the project).”

And fewer jitters because of that much less coffee. Or in my case, Diet Pepsi.

[Darren Roark]

I ended up building a hackintosh in September of 11′. I had an ATI gpu which ran FCPX great. Then I recently upgraded to a GeForce GTX 570 which really made a difference.

I spent just over $1,000.00 to have an i7 quad core processor and 16gb of ram. It even has a Blu-Ray burner.

The only time I have ever had any downtime is when I upgraded a version of Lion before doing the cardinal rule of hackintoshing, clone your boot drive first. Other than that, it has been just as stable as my aging 2007 Mac Pro and over twice as fast.

You can put PC Nvidia cards in to mac pros to give them CUDA.