[Andrew Richards]

[Craig Seeman] “Interesting takeaways for me are their comments that most apps benefit more from CPU speed rather than number of cores. That for the most part the 15″ MBPr is faster than the MacPros.”

Many of their real-world tests were more of a storage I/O test than a CPU test, so it makes sense that the 6G SATA SSD in the MBPr would skunk the 7200 RPM 3G SATA HDD in the Mac Pro. They should also test with an OWC Accelsior and make a bigger point about how much their tests are biased to storage performance.

They also pay way too much attention to the old ports on the Mac Pro and barely mention its old microarchitecture. If Apple had revved the Mac Pro with the new Sandy Bridge Xeons, there would be no contest- the Mac Pro would be stomping the new laptops (and the old Mac Pros) in every test by a wide margin. Thunderbolt and USB 3 are a minor footnote compared to the importance of the CPUs and their host chipset with its attendant PCIe 3.0 and 6G SAS/SATA storage controller.

I even take issue characterizing the 2012 Mac Pro as having had a “speed bump”. All they did was make formerly optional CPUs standard kit.

Best,
Andy

[Andrew Richards]

[Jim Giberti] “But what if they really are being really smart and innovative (who, Apple?) and around the corner, say 12-18 months everything came together regarding their next 10 years of pro production tools – hardware and software.”

If I’m right about this AVX thing, then it makes me all the more sad that Apple is sitting out the new generation of Xeons. They too offer AVX, and they are absolute beasts. Just look at what Walter Biscardi saw in his test of the ProMAX ONE. Face melting.

It is nice that FCPX is so attuned to the baked-in efficiencies in Intel’s new CPUs, and that the mainstream ones found in iMacs and MacBook Pros can be so effective because of it. But more is still more, and new E5 Xeons are way more. If they had done a new Mac Pro around them it would have been truly stunning performance.

The only thing that would be slowing FCPX down would be all its UI animations. 😉

Best,
Andy

[Andrew Richards]

I added an edit to my reply regarding beachballs while you were posting.

Best,
Andy

[Andrew Richards]

[Davee Schulte] “Just so I’m clear…FCPX will run faster on a Thunderbolt EQUIPPED mac, meaning you don’t necessarily have to be running thunderbolt drives to see the improved performance?”

Correct! Thunderbolt Macs are all using either Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge Intel CPUs with AVX. There is no need to be engaging the Thunderbolt bus to get the advantages of AVX processing. It is simply a facility of those microarchitectures that is not present in older microarchitectures like the one still in use in the Mac Pro (Westmere).

[Davee Schulte] “Still get the spinning beachball so this could help alot.”

Fast storage is also important, and you will beachball whenever the system is waiting on storage (among other things). AVX is for stuff like image processing in real time, so it won’t make up for slower storage, but it will perk up other aspects as many have noticed. I don’t know what specific aspect of FCPX it directly affects, but it seems to be the difference in why Thunderbolt-equipped Macs seem to run FCPX “better”.

Best,
Andy

[Andrew Richards]

[Mark Dobson] “So with the Ram fixed at 16 GB the next issue might be what performance difference there might be between the 2.6GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7 processor and the 2.7GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7.”

Hmm…

$250 seems like a lot for just +100 MHz (at both normal and Turbo Boost) and +2 MB of L3 cache. Once upon a time you had to upgrade the CPU to get hyperthreading, but not anymore. This upgrade doesn’t look like it would move the needle much.

I think the $250 can be better spent elsewhere.

Best,
Andy

[Andrew Richards]

[TImothy Auld] “It was good of you though to do a such a diligent search for a fitting likeness of me.”

Not trying to offend, just wasn’t sure if I should have read your post as sarcasm.

Best,
Andy

[Andrew Richards]

[Andrew Richards]

With all the consolidation in the SATA HDD manufacturing space, yep, we’re down to three companies (really it’s two since WD bought Hitachi GST last year, but they haven’t consolidated their brands or product lines).

If you opt for the 7K4000, make sure whatever is acting as your RAID controller is AF-friendly.

Best,
Andy

[Andrew Richards]

[Patrick Morgan] “We use the windows Copy command in our application to move files after creation from a staging area to the final destination. However we a client with a Stornext SAN where this process fails every time.”

Do you mean on the command line COPY?

Which version of StorNext? Is this a copy within StorNext (one part of the SN filesystem to another)?

Is the StorNext metadata controller running on Windows?

Is this a mixed-platform StorNext environment?

Best,
Andy

[Andrew Richards]

Take a look at ChronoSync.

Best,
Andy