[Kalvin Taylor]

Thanks to your replies and some more research I’ve updated my current build as follows. I would love to get any more feedback from you all!

bought from Apple,
Two 2.40GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon processors (12 cores)
12GB (6X2Gb) memory
1TB 7200rpm SATA 3Gb/s hard drive
ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB

and I will purchase and add myself,
24GB (6x4Gb) memory
2 x 2TB 72000rpm SATA 3Gb/s hard drive (RAID 0/striped)
NVIDIA Quadro 4000

With any luck I can sell the memory and video card from Apple and make a couple hundred bucks back!

[Kalvin Taylor]

Great, thanks Jeff!

[Kalvin Taylor]

I appreciate the detailed reply Ryan!

RAM: You suggest buying from somewhere like OWC Mac Sales. I’ve read that it’s best to use a triple channel set up (leaving the fourth slot open) on each side for these Macs with 8 slots. What is your suggestion for spending somewhere around $500 on the memory? It looks like 24gb (4gb x 6) from OWC is my best option but this seems like a waste of money having to purchase the minimum 12gb (6gb x 2) from Apple! Also, for video editing what tasks would I see the biggest difference in performance for 12gb vs 24gb vs 48gb?

Storage: I shoot DSLR right now but eventually I would love to upgrade to RED in the future. So mostly I would be working with H.264 or similarly encoded video files, usually compressed to some degree rather than extremely large uncompressed footage.

Video Card: Again it is unfortunate to waste money on an ATI card if I were to buy an NVIDIA separately (and what am I supposed to do with the ATI then!) but if the performance difference is really that significant it may be worth it. Do you know of any benchmark comparisons that have been done based on this use and specific software?

I’ve heard the rumours (and somewhat confirmation by CEO Tim Cook) of a new Mac Pro coming ‘later next year’ but I’m not sure I can wait that long, unfortunately. Still looking at the price and considering my options!

[Kalvin Taylor]

After posting I continued doing some further research, and it turns out for this particular video they used a long line of Go Pros to do a bullet time effect. So would there be an alternate way to do this, with only two cameras and some After Effects type work?