2012 Mini i7 2.3 vs 2008 Mac Pro

[waloshin]

The 2008 mac pro is a quad core not the dual quadcore. Both systems would have 16 GBs of ram.

Would I see a performance increase or decrease using a Mac Pro mentioned above for editing SD and some HD in FCPX 10.3 compared to my Mini?

Or would a egpu through my thunderbolt 1 on my 2012 Mac mini be the best solution for FCPX?

Thanks

 

[waloshin]

After sleeping on it. I realized I would have to spend $100+ on a second xenon, $100+ to get 16 GBs of ram.

In the end a Egpu would make more sense with my Mini I would be using a lot less power and an Egpu can be used with other macs when I upgrade in the future.

Though how effective would a egpu be with thunderbolt 1 in FCPX?

 

[ColdCase]

Thunderbolt 1 is capable of carrying 4 PCIe Gen1 lanes (or x4.1). Thunderbolt 1 gives you about 50% bandwidth of TB2.

What Video card do you intend to use (in either machine)

The $300 2x2.8 Quad Core (8 cores) 2008 Mac pro I picked up a couple months ago is much snappier than my mini with everyday tasks, but I have not tried an eGPU approach. The MacPro will way out perform the mini+eGPU, given the same graphics card. Most noticeable while editing.

I think eGPUs only make sense if you want to only use one machine, like a laptop, for everything.

You may want to check some of the gaming forums for eGPU performance comparisons while waiting for someone with more direct knowledge jumps in here.

 

[waloshin]

Thanks for the reply I am looking at a ATI R9 270 or a AMD Radeon HD 7950.

 

[chrfr]

In actual CPU performance, my quad 2.3 Mini is nearly as fast as my 8 core 2.8 2008 Mac Pro for things like running Handbrake, for instance. I would expect the Mini to be significantly faster than a 2008 quad core Mac Pro.

 

[waloshin]

In actual CPU performance, my quad 2.3 Mini is nearly as fast as my 8 core 2.8 2008 Mac Pro for things like running Handbrake, for instance. I would expect the Mini to be significantly faster than a 2008 quad core Mac Pro.

How would the Mac Pro Quad with a HD 7950 do in FCPX compared to the Mini.

 

[4God]

How would the Mac Pro Quad with a HD 7950 do in FCPX compared to the Mini.

That Mac Pro setup would smoke the Mini.

 

[waloshin]

Could I use a AtI r9 280 ?

 

[RCAFBrat]

Couple of things to consider:

(1) that the mini will perform well at some tasks, as suggested by chrfr, might be related to it's CPU having Quicksync which is dedicated core for video trans-coding - therefore high performance in this area is not necessarily an indication that the CPU is more or less powerful than another, but given this is a video forum it may be important to you

(2) if cost is an issue, have you factored in the price of an eGPU enclosure

I don't pretend to know a lot about Mac Pro GPU compatibility but the three that you mention are not very expensive compared to the Thunderbolt eGPU enclosures I found online - it seems to me that with the new Nvidia Pascal series in the wild it might be worthwhile looking for a cheap GTX 970 or higher Maxwell for that Mac Pro instead of eGPU plus enclosure - OSX drivers are available from Nvidia

I did look into eGPU solution about 2 years ago for my son - he has a Late 2012 iMac loaded but the GPU is not very powerful and he needed better for rendering in Blender - there really weren't any decent options at the time so I ended up building a Linux based computer for him that he is very happy with (need to add a second GPU though - GTX 970 is probably twice as fast as the iMac and GUI is super smooth even with big projects but he wants better)

At least there are a couple of decent options available today for eGPU, but not necessarily cheap and they seem to be Thunderbolt 3, which I hope is backwards compatible if you pursue the eGPU path

 

[waloshin]

I g

Couple of things to consider:

(1) that the mini will perform well at some tasks, as suggested by chrfr, might be related to it's CPU having Quicksync which is dedicated core for video trans-coding - therefore high performance in this area is not necessarily an indication that the CPU is more or less powerful than another, but given this is a video forum it may be important to you

(2) if cost is an issue, have you factored in the price of an eGPU enclosure

I don't pretend to know a lot about Mac Pro GPU compatibility but the three that you mention are not very expensive compared to the Thunderbolt eGPU enclosures I found online - it seems to me that with the new Nvidia Pascal series in the wild it might be worthwhile looking for a cheap GTX 970 or higher Maxwell for that Mac Pro instead of eGPU plus enclosure - OSX drivers are available from Nvidia

I did look into eGPU solution about 2 years ago for my son - he has a Late 2012 iMac loaded but the GPU is not very powerful and he needed better for rendering in Blender - there really weren't any decent options at the time so I ended up building a Linux based computer for him that he is very happy with (need to add a second GPU though - GTX 970 is probably twice as fast as the iMac and GUI is super smooth even with big projects but he wants better)

At least there are a couple of decent options available today for eGPU, but not necessarily cheap and they seem to be Thunderbolt 3, which I hope is backwards compatible if you pursue the eGPU path

I plan to use a better GPU in the Mac Pro I will look at an Egpu in the future when they are cheaper and supported.

 

[waloshin]

I am looking to connect a Asus R9 280X what do I need to make sure this runs without destroying my Mac Pro?

Could I use 2 SATA to 1 8 pin and the 6 pin from the motherboard?

 

[ColdCase]

Its possible that you'd get more responses and maybe even better ones on this type of hardware question within the macpro forum. https://forums.macrumors.com/forums/mac-pro.1/