Upgrading to New MacPro

[Tim Jones]

Only one “gotcha” in that list – No current CC GPU acceleration support in the new MP.

I have both my new Mac Pro and my older Mac Pro 4,1 running Adobe’s CC apps and while I love the new beauty, I still get better performance in PP/AE CC on the 4,1.

Honestly, I would recommend that you buy one of these beasts, get it sorted and set up and then compare it to your existing systems. No one can tell you what will work best for your environment better than a hands-on example; you know, “the proof is in the tasting of the pudding.”

It may be that the best step that you could take would be upgrading the graphics card in your 4,1’s to a newer Nvidia Kepler-based K5000 instead of going the whole nine yards with the new MP’s.

Tim
—
Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters!

[Emre Tufekcioglu]

Thanks for the feedback Tim, I have many more graphics systems as well as photo stations as well so I need to try to keep all systems+software uniform.

Cheers,

[Steve Connor]

[Tim Jones] “Only one “gotcha” in that list – No current CC GPU acceleration support in the new MP.”

Is that true, I thought it used Open CL for GPU acceleration?

Steve Connor
Mellowing slowly

[Tim Jones]

The good news here is that aside from the physical look of the system, the management and operation stay the same.

If you haven’t looked into that Kepler upgrade for your existing Mac Pro 4,1 units, I think that you will be very surprised at how much life these systems still have in them (much to Apple’s disappointment, I’m sure 🙂 ).

Tim
—
Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters!

[Erik Lindahl]

Is this really true? Now I’ve only compared a 2008 8-core system with a 2013 8-core system and not PremierPro specifically.

From my tests AE takes roughly as little as 30% of the time – ie 60 min render is down to 18 minutes.

From my tests in Episode Pro transcode take around 40% of the time – ie 60 min render is down to 24 minutes.

Both of the above are primarily CPU, I/O, RAM etc stress, not so much the GPU. If you’re comparing something currently accelerated by CUDA (3D RayTracing in AE for example), yes, an older system will be far faster. But even apps like Resolve require a very much upgraded old system to be compare:able to a 2013 system and you more or less are required “unsupported” solutions. But yes, a maxed out 2012 12-core MacPro CAN be quite upgraded.

[Erik Lindahl]

To answer your question we’re just about to install a new 8-core system. A few things to think about:

– The 12-core system can be a waste in a lot of cases. The 6-core and 8-core machines for a lot of cases order better bang for the buck or just simply more bang.

– 512 GB or 1 TB internal SSD will offer better I/O than the 256 GB.

– I’d defiantly go for the D700’s for future proofing.

In terms of our system the only issue we had was that the system froze when it went to sleep at the same time as the screen was sleeping. Seems to be a know issue. Aside from that we’re just planning the I/O properly to max out the thunderbolt ports

BUS 0 = GUI SCREENS
BUS 1 = PROJECT DRIVE SSD (1300 MB/s)
BUS 2 = MEDIA RAID (800 MB/s) + VIDEO I/O

I’d imagine we primarily get external media from the net or USB-3 drives. The above should work smoothly. The machine we got (8-core, D700, 64GB, 1TB) is impressively silent as well. Wouldn’t have an issue having a system like that in the studio.

[Ericbowen]

The media, workflow, and AE work decide whether the 8 core is better than the 10 or 12 Core. The 10 Core is what I would recommend for the ideal point versus price especially if AE work is greater than 25% of the workflow on that system. Definitely get the 10 or 12 Core if R3D is involved and greater than 2K resolution. The Open CL does work in Adobe Premiere CC if 10.9.3 hasn’t totally broken it at this point. The word so far is not positive at the moment so it will depend on who has to update to fix the issues that decides resolution time. If Mac is the only option or preferred due to OSX then definitely get the nMPro. Just understand PC/Win system has far better configuration/performance options especially with Adobe for the same tech investment. AE is definitely not ideal on Mac anymore with 1 CPU module but can still get the job done for most things. It will just take longer to render out. This is where a dedicated render system will start coming into play.

Eric-ADK
Tech Manager
support@adkvideoediting.com

[Emre Tufekcioglu]

Thanks you to all that responded, this is very useful information.

[Tim Jones]

As it turns out, the change for Premiere is done and I do get GPU acceleration (I don’t export from PP, so I hadn’t noticed). However, for After Effects where I’ve been working for the past 3 months, we’re still limited to Nvidia hardware and CUDA.

I took this as a wakeup call, ran some render tests from PP and I was amazed at the change over my 4,1 in encoding. Even against my Kepler card in the 4,1, the difference was over 20% on 3 quick tests.

I now take my wait recommendation back. If that kind of performance is what we’re seeing with CC on the new MP, I say go for it. I suspect the AE update will be just as impressive.

Tim
—
Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters!

[Kent Beeson]

“512 GB or 1 TB internal SSD will offer better I/O than the 256 GB.”

What do you mean by that? 32GB 8 core, D700, 256GB was what I was going for – until I read your post