Bottleneck when editing, need advice on upgrade

[lJoSquaredl]

So I do a lot of heavy editing which causes my baseline rMBP with the 650m to slow down pretty quick. I'd say right around the 60 second mark my computer starts to choke and can't handle the amount of layering I do. I'd like to upgrade soon, to a new rMBP or possibly an iMac/Air combo. I'm looking at either

rMBP - Iris with 16gb ram
iMac - Maxed out (21 inch model)

Could possibly get a rMBP with 16gb ram and the 750m, but i've heard the Iris Pro tweaked for Open CL does a pretty good job of keeping up on FCPX and Aperture. Was wondering how much more of a performance boost I would see from either going for the higher end rMBP with a video card, or the 21 inch iMac maxed. I've never owned an iMac, besides the bigger screen do desktop parts really increase performance by that much if everything is pretty similar in specs?

 

[Macman45]

Trouble with the 21" is I think I'm right in saying that you don't have the option of the 4GB GPU...That only comes as an option with the 27" You might be better off with the rMBP, a large SSD and the extra RAM.

 

[lJoSquaredl]

Trouble with the 21" is I think I'm right in saying that you don't have the option of the 4GB GPU...That only comes as an option with the 27" You might be better off with the rMBP, a large SSD and the extra RAM.

Nope I believe it just has the 750m, it's the same card that's in the rMBP isn't it? Didn't know if a desktop processor and better ventilation did that much more to boost speeds over what looks like the same specs, just different monitor. Also didn't know how much more performance I would get out of the 750m vs Iris Pro since Iris is tweaked to run programs like FCPX and Aperture pretty well, as opposed to last years integrated graphics.

Basically I know ram and SSD space will be improvement, but how comparable would a desktop processor vs mobiles processor be, and a video card vs Iris optimized for OpenCL.

Also does having more space for the parts to get air and heat up make that big of a difference? I gotta say rMBPs are pretty damn good at keeping the computer cool and air flowing, so I wouldn't think it'd make that much of a difference.

 

[LethalWolfe]

Define "heavy editing"? What codecs are you using? What kind of layering are you doing? What storage are you using? Etc.,.

Workflow modification might be more cost effective than a new machine.

 

[Siderz]

As LethalWolfe said, we're gonna need more info on what you're actually doing and what software you're using.

So I do a lot of heavy editing which causes my baseline rMBP with the 650m to slow down pretty quick. I'd say right around the 60 second mark my computer starts to choke and can't handle the amount of layering I do.

When you say "slow down" and "choke", are you rendering and doing other things like browsing the web? When you're rendering, you shouldn't be doing anything else, you're better off leaving it to render.

 

[lJoSquaredl]

As LethalWolfe said, we're gonna need more info on what you're actually doing and what software you're using.



When you say "slow down" and "choke", are you rendering and doing other things like browsing the web? When you're rendering, you shouldn't be doing anything else, you're better off leaving it to render.

I always close everything out before I edit. I just do lots of layering of efx, lots of syncing, cutting, etc. I actually edited yesterday and couldn't get anything done because FCPX was freezing and I was forced to quit over and over just from adding an MGlitch effect. This happens sometimes with other stuff too so I know it's not just that. My 8gb of RAM always seems maxed and it always feels choppy to edit, and i'm forced to quit a lot lately as well. Almost thinking about upgrading to a maxed version of my computer from last year, or maybe get a baseline rMBP from this year with the Iris Pro but 16gb of RAM instead. Would this help fix the issue, is not having enough RAM possibly the problem for my projects? I'm literally not even hitting 2 mins of length before I get these issues.

 

[AcesHigh87]

I always close everything out before I edit. I just do lots of layering of efx, lots of syncing, cutting, etc. I actually edited yesterday and couldn't get anything done because FCPX was freezing and I was forced to quit over and over just from adding an MGlitch effect. This happens sometimes with other stuff too so I know it's not just that. My 8gb of RAM always seems maxed and it always feels choppy to edit, and i'm forced to quit a lot lately as well. Almost thinking about upgrading to a maxed version of my computer from last year, or maybe get a baseline rMBP from this year with the Iris Pro but 16gb of RAM instead. Would this help fix the issue, is not having enough RAM possibly the problem for my projects? I'm literally not even hitting 2 mins of length before I get these issues.

When you start to feel the slow-down open activity monitor and take a look at the memory tab.

If you're seeing page outs than you need more RAM. Anything over 1GB in page outs is my limit before I say more RAM is needed.

Page outs are basically the computer's way of handling data when the RAM gets full. It can't write to the RAM anymore so it writes instead to the HDD which is obviously much slower.

At 8GB of RAM my iMac (specs in sig) got them all the time. I've up it to 20GB now (odd number but it works) and have no page out problems at all, even when doing heavy Color and Effect work in Avid.

Normally I would say upgrade the RAM if that's your issue but unfortunately with the rMBP it's not an option.

 

[lJoSquaredl]

When you start to feel the slow-down open activity monitor and take a look at the memory tab.

If you're seeing page outs than you need more RAM. Anything over 1GB in page outs is my limit before I say more RAM is needed.

Page outs are basically the computer's way of handling data when the RAM gets full. It can't write to the RAM anymore so it writes instead to the HDD which is obviously much slower.

At 8GB of RAM my iMac (specs in sig) got them all the time. I've up it to 20GB now (odd number but it works) and have no page out problems at all, even when doing heavy Color and Effect work in Avid.

Normally I would say upgrade the RAM if that's your issue but unfortunately with the rMBP it's not an option.

Sorry bout late response, been busy working. Finally got around to editing a bit, after about 30 mins I was over 2gb of swap used:/ (30 second video) Hopefully 16gb will do the trick. Do you know if upping the ram on the baseline rMBP with Iris Pro would be ok? Or would the subtraction of dedicated graphics, even with OpenCL on Iris, still lower my performance in the end? Gaming isn't a concern I play on low-med graphics anyways.

 

[acearchie]

You haven’t yet mentioned what codec you are using and where the media files are stored.

From my brief experience with the rMBP it can handle much more than my MBP which seems to do alright with most things I throw at it.