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Mac Pro Buying Recommendation

C

cloud888

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 19, 2005
4
0
Hi, I'm about to purchase my first Macpro and need some advice. Have to buy before the end of this year and here are my choices.

Macpro 6 Core 3.33ghz
Macpro 12 Core 2.66ghz

The system will be for heavy video editing on Final Cut Pro, light After Effects CS5 and light Photoshop CS5 work. Done my research and 6 core are most people's recommendations. Just wanted to see if anyone has bought the 6 core for Final Cut work? Will have the system for a few years. Also the system could be possibly used for rendering Red footage.

Any recommendations?
 
Hellhammer said:
http://www.barefeats.com/wst10c.html
http://www.barefeats.com/wst10c2.html

12-core will definitely be faster when encoding or rendering.
Click to expand...

Be careful - the OP said he was a light After Effects user, and the only part of FCP that really takes advantage of the 12 cores is Compressor. FCP in general is not well-setup for multiple cores (notice the Color benchmarks - 3.33 hex wins).

The answer today is the 3.33 hex. The answer for a future version of FCP might be the 12 core, but who knows when that is. After Effects clearly can leverage the 12 core, but the OP said that was not the main application.

The problem is we are already talking about up to 12 cores (with Hyper Threading) on the 3.33 hex. Gaining significant throughput with double the cores is tough due to not only software support, but scalability on large number of cores. The advantage of a 4 core over a 2 core is a lot bigger than going from 12 to 24 due to the difficulties of scaling the software to such large numbers of cores. The real world starts to limit the theoretical linear scaling. The 12 core 2.93 should be 1.8x faster than the 3.33x6, but it is not even close to that with the exception of After Effects with 32GB RAM. The only reason AE scales as well as it does is it is written to permit manual assignment of cores and memory. Compressor and Handbrake don't scale anywhere near that well.

Until software is rewritten to take advantage of large core counts, clock speed is still the driver. To me, the hex is the answer with the money saved being spent on a fast RAID setup with a good SAS controller to get > 500 MB/s throughput into the array.
 
Last edited:
khollister said:
The answer today is probably the 3.33 hex. The answer for a future version of FCP might be the 12 core, but who knows when that is.
Click to expand...

Considering that Apple is in the process of dumping the "Pro" line of their hardware (XServe RAID, XServe, Matte displays, Mac Pro?), probably not very soon.
It's gonna be a long time till consumer hardware will see 12 cores on a single chip.
 
Just saw a blurb about FCS being release early next year. If I find it, will post the link. Don't know if they are going 64 bit or not but would be stupid if they didn't. I think most of the NLE's have moved on to 64 bit.
 
khollister said:
Until software is rewritten to take advantage of large core counts, clock speed is still the driver. To me, the hex is the answer with the money saved being spent on a fast RAID setup with a good SAS controller to get > 500 MB/s throughput into the array.
Click to expand...
Exactly. :)

Addressing the bottlenecks that exist in the base 3.33 Hex system (memory capacity and disk I/O) is a better expenditure of funds than cores that won't be utilized but in a rare instance here and there. And such upgrades will be quite noticable for the described usage.
 
bearcatrp said:
Just saw a blurb about FCS being release early next year. If I find it, will post the link. Don't know if they are going 64 bit or not but would be stupid if they didn't. I think most of the NLE's have moved on to 64 bit.
Click to expand...

That gets you past the 4 GB memory limit, but does not necessarily guarantee the software is redesigned to make efficient use of large numbers of cores. In the case of OS X and 64 bit Cocoa apps, this would best be served by leveraging the Apple Grand Central Dispatch API's. There are plenty of 64 bit apps that do not scale well to multiple processors (Photoshop CS5 comes to mind).
 
Bearcatrp,
If you could find that link to FCS info that would be great.

I'm planning to start a small production company as I do freelance shooting and editing. Business is picking up and I need to get a Macpro to really pump things out on time. My current machine is:

Macbook Pro 15inch 2.66ghz i7
8G ram
500g 7200rpm

Served me well. I usually shoot on Canon 7D & 5D
- Canon 7D & 5D 1080p footage H264 Codec
- Panasonic P2HD 1080p footage AVC-Intra Codec
- Red Codec (will eventually buy a Red Rocket Card to help with rendering real time 4K)
I have a friend who has a Red One but he only has a laptop so he doesn't render his footage. Will rent my edit suite to his clients.

Also if I use the 6 core, how well will the system run if I have open at the same time, Final Cut, Compressor, Motion, Photoshop, After Effects, Handbrake?

I've read the "barefeats guide as well as "mac performance guide" but the tests has been on 1 program running. Will the 6 core run well or better to get the 12 core when running multiple programs?
 
khollister said:
Be careful - the OP said he was a light After Effects user, and the only part of FCP that really takes advantage of the 12 cores is Compressor. FCP in general is not well-setup for multiple cores (notice the Color benchmarks - 3.33 hex wins).

The answer today is the 3.33 hex. The answer for a future version of FCP might be the 12 core, but who knows when that is. After Effects clearly can leverage the 12 core, but the OP said that was not the main application.

The problem is we are already talking about up to 12 cores (with Hyper Threading) on the 3.33 hex. Gaining significant throughput with double the cores is tough due to not only software support, but scalability on large number of cores. The advantage of a 4 core over a 2 core is a lot bigger than going from 12 to 24 due to the difficulties of scaling the software to such large numbers of cores. The real world starts to limit the theoretical linear scaling. The 12 core 2.93 should be 1.8x faster than the 3.33x6, but it is not even close to that with the exception of After Effects with 32GB RAM. The only reason AE scales as well as it does is it is written to permit manual assignment of cores and memory. Compressor and Handbrake don't scale anywhere near that well.

Until software is rewritten to take advantage of large core counts, clock speed is still the driver. To me, the hex is the answer with the money saved being spent on a fast RAID setup with a good SAS controller to get > 500 MB/s throughput into the array.
Click to expand...

That is true. 12-core is still faster in encoding or rendering (assuming we are talking about software that supports that many threads like Compressor) but significantly slower in tasks that do not take advantage of those extra cores. 6-core should be the sweet-spot.

Okay, time to confess. I guess I was too excited about my MBA which arrived yesterday so my post ended up being a bit short and not looking at things from all angles :eek::p Thanks for the correction and broader analysis
 
Thanks everyone for the advice. Will probably get the 6 core 3.33ghz as with the money I save, I can add the following:

- refurb 30" cinema display
- 240g owc ssd
- 4 x 2tb wd black drives
- 24g ram or maybe 32g ram

When the software takes advantage of 12 cores and business really booms then I'll just sell the 6 and upgrade when Sandy Bridge comes out. Plus I'm getting 25% off this purchase :)
 
cloud888 said:
Thanks everyone for the advice. Will probably get the 6 core 3.33ghz as with the money I save, I can add the following:

- refurb 30" cinema display
- 240g owc ssd
- 4 x 2tb wd black drives
- 24g ram or maybe 32g ram

When the software takes advantage of 12 cores and business really booms then I'll just sell the 6 and upgrade when Sandy Bridge comes out. Plus I'm getting 25% off this purchase :)
Click to expand...

Smart plan! Good luck with the business!

JohnG
 
When it comes to rendering like that, you can always have faster render times. So my advice would get the most processing power you can afford.
 
If money is not an issue I'll go with the 12 core, but I doubt you'll see any improvements in your work flow in the short run, until apps can utilize the additional cores effectively. I have a 3.33 6C and 3.0 8C and my 6C is the king at this moment. the programs that I use are FCP, CS5, LR3 and just started experimenting with CS5 Suite.

Garen
 
bearcatrp said:
Octo is cheaper than a 12 core at this time. You can upgrade those quads later when SB comes out. Should drop in price then.
Click to expand...

If I hadn't had a 6 core CPU on hand I certainly would have bought the octo now, with the intention of making it a 12 core down the road once those CPUs have been driven down in price.
 
I know I sound like a broken record in these threads, but what's wrong with the 3.2GHz Quad for this kind of work?

If it's not good enough, it's presumably because you can't wait for things to render, and time is money, so only you can decide if the added income you make with faster turn-around times on the 12 core or even 6 core can justify the added investment.
 
Well I went with the 6 core Macpro and was to be delivered on the 10th but it came on the 9th. :)

Booted it up and was amazed at the speed of the machine. everything just loads so snappily and its damn quiet.

Just ordered:

240gb owc ssd
24g ram
3 x 600gb wd velociraptors

Will post review of the machine and pics when I install my programs etc.
 
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