Mac 5,1 - Need upgrade advice

[Will.henri]

Hello ! I'm fresh new here, nice forum btw. Before beginning, I just want to say sorry for my english, I'm french. I came here because each time a go to a computer store, nobody can help me. It seem that shop are reticent with upgrading a mac.

Here's the situation. I've a MacPro 5,1 mid 2010 which I give a little boost year by year. I'm a filmmaker and my project keep going bigger and bigger in the past 5 years. I'm on Adobe CC and I begging to feel the pressure of the 4K. My last project was a music video shot on a sony fs7 and after noise reduction, grading and stuff, its begging to be slower and slower and render took forever. Here's the specs :

- 10.9.5
- 2x 2,4 GHz QuadCore Intel Xeon (stock)
- 22gig (2x 8gig 1066MHz DDR3 ECC (buy from OCW), 6x 1gig 1066MHz DDR3 ECC (stock))
- GeForce GTX 680 2gig (buy from OCW)
- 1x HDD Seagate Barracuda
1x HDD WD Caviar Black
1x SSD 2.5 Intel 250Serie 240gig
1x SSD 3.5 OCZ Vertex2

I usually run all my program and OSX on the SSD. My media are on the HDD. In fact, I've search a lot and I don't know wich upgrade should I do and wich one will be more cost efficient. I'm ready to spend like 1000-1500$.

CPU
- Should I upgrade de CPU to 2x Intel X5680 @ 3.33?
- It look pretty expensive if I can with OCW (1400$) or a guy like pindelski.com (1200$). Should I do it by myself (it'll be like 800$?) and is it a hard task?

RAM
- Do a upgrade will worth it and how much RAM should I put?
- Also I'm not sure why, but I've heard that if I do the CPU upgrade, I'll have to change all my ram to 1333MHz ?

HardDrive
- Do a PCIe with SSD will help? I saw the OCW solution Mercury Accelsior E2 480gig (about 400$). Not sur if I should build one by myself. I read some article but i'm little confuse about the solution I have. I saw some card with 2 little SSD on and some with just 1 2.5 SSD. Someone know a good solution?
- With all the SSD and HDD I have, can't believe I can find a way to be more efficient. I'm not really familiar with RAID but not afraid of this, someone have a idea of the setup I can make?

Videocard
- Should I upgrade it for a 980ti ?

I know its a lot but I'll apreciate if someone can take the time to help me. Thanks a lot!

 

[ActionableMango]

You don't need to change all your RAM out, but it will be a little slower than 1333 RAM. To determine whether you have sufficient RAM or you need more, use Activity Monitor while you are working and check your RAM utilization. If you are running out of RAM, you need more. If you are not running out of RAM, then adding more RAM will not help much or at all.

Once your RAM is addressed, I believe your best gain will probably be from CPU upgrades. In a 5,1 it is easy and you should do it yourself to save a ton of money.

The OCZ Vertex 2 is an old Sandforce drive that is known to be prone to failure. I have two and they both failed. I strongly recommend at a minimum, that you back up your data, then update the firmware on those drives, and keep your backups up to date. Preferably, I would switch to a different SSD altogether.

I know very little about GPU acceleration in Adobe CC products, but I suspect that very few functions and filters actually use GPU acceleration. If that's the case, you won't see much benefit moving from a 680 to a 980ti unless you use those specific accelerated functions heavily. Unfortunately there are also some display bugs with the Adobe products in OS X and Nvidia Maxwell drivers right now, so that could be a bad move.

 

[Larry-K]

Hello ! I'm fresh new here, nice forum btw. Before beginning, I just want to say sorry for my english, I'm french. I came here because each time a go to a computer store, nobody can help me. It seem that shop are reticent with upgrading a mac.

CPU
- Should I upgrade de CPU to 2x Intel X5680 @ 3.33?
- It look pretty expensive if I can with OCW (1400$) or a guy like pindelski.com (1200$). Should I do it by myself (it'll be like 800$?) and is it a hard task?


I know its a lot but I'll apreciate if someone can take the time to help me. Thanks a lot!

Depends on how tech savvy and meticulous you are, but If found it quite easy to replace the 2.4s with 3.46s.

Dramatic performance increase, would be close with the 5680s.

I'd also go with a PCIe SSD RAID.

 

[Will.henri]

[doublepost=1460072663][/doublepost]

You don't need to change all your RAM out, but it will be a little slower than 1333 RAM. To determine whether you have sufficient RAM or you need more, use Activity Monitor while you are working and check your RAM utilization. If you are running out of RAM, you need more. If you are not running out of RAM, then adding more RAM will not help much or at all.

Once your RAM is addressed, I believe your best gain will probably be from CPU upgrades. In a 5,1 it is easy and you should do it yourself to save a ton of money.

The OCZ Vertex 2 is an old Sandforce drive that is known to be prone to failure. I have two and they both failed. I strongly recommend at a minimum, that you back up your data, then update the firmware on those drives, and keep your backups up to date. Preferably, I would switch to a different SSD altogether.

I know very little about GPU acceleration in Adobe CC products, but I suspect that very few functions and filters actually use GPU acceleration. If that's the case, you won't see much benefit moving from a 680 to a 980ti unless you use those specific accelerated functions heavily. Unfortunately there are also some display bugs with the Adobe products in OS X and Nvidia Maxwell drivers right now, so that could be a bad move.

Thanks for the tip. I'll open a heavy project tomorrow and check my Activity Monitor. Also, I'll begging to search for some information about how to swap the CPU.

For the OCZ Vertex, good news, I've just format it, there's nothing on it hehe !

I've discover that I could use GPU Cuda today, so i've download the driver for my GTX680 and make some test in Premiere between the CUDA and Open CL with the same project i was struggling. Render with CUDA seems faster. Nothing scientific tho I've seen weird printscreen of user that experiment strange green line on their monitor with CUDA in Premiere. For me, the same thing happen with OPEN CL option !

p.s : i don't know much about how OPEN CL and CUDA work. I just know that you can choose between the two.
[doublepost=1460073681][/doublepost]

Depends on how tech savvy and meticulous you are, but If found it quite easy to replace the 2.4s with 3.46s.

Dramatic performance increase, would be close with the 5680s.

I'd also go with a PCIe SSD RAID.

Would you recommand 5680 or I should check something else ?

For the PCIe SSD RAID, how its work? Is it just a combinaison of an SSD plug into a PCIe card to SSD adapter?
Also I've see card for 2.5 SSD drive and for M.2 something (is it just the size?) Sorry for my noobness !

I've see a post in the forum who said Lycom DT-120 M.2 Adapter with Samsung 256GB SM951. But it was in 2015.

 

[ActionableMango]

I've discover that I could use GPU Cuda today, so i've download the driver for my GTX680 and make some test in Premiere between the CUDA and Open CL with the same project i was struggling. Render with CUDA seems faster.

Just to be clear, you installed the CUDA driver, right? Not the basic Nvidia web driver? Just making sure.

 

[Will.henri]

Just to be clear, you installed the CUDA driver, right? Not the basic Nvidia web driver? Just making sure.

Yea ! The CUDA driver.

 

[DPUser]

X5680s or 90s will be a great upgrade. Used 5680s are running about $200-250 each, so you're talking about $400-500 for a giant speed boost. Considering the nominal speed increase they offer, 5690s are probably not worth the premium price they currently demand but, then again, just saw this listing:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Xeon-...474254?hash=item3ac1059f0e:g:eccAAOSw5VZXBW9J

5,1s are a dead cinch to upgrade. Do it!

 

[Larry-K]

Would you recommand 5680 or I should check something else ?

For the PCIe SSD RAID, how its work? Is it just a combinaison of an SSD plug into a PCIe card to SSD adapter?
Also I've see card for 2.5 SSD drive and for M.2 something (is it just the size?) Sorry for my noobness !

I like the 5690's myself, I have a machine with a 5680 and I swear the single processor performance is noticeably faster. If it's delusion, it's a nice one. Either way. you'll notice the difference over the 2.4s.

The PCIe RAID basically has 2 SSDs on it and plugs into the PCIe slot of your choosing. The single SSD PCIe adapter bypasses that SATA 2 bus that the Hard Drive bays use on oMPs, so you get SATA 3 speeds for your single SSD.

There's a thread (or several) that has lots of discussion about the CPU upgrade, I'll see if I can find it and replay later, but you can probably find it. I think it primarily deals with the 4,1 upgrade. the 5,1 upgrade is easier.

 

[flowrider]

The stock RAM that you have is 1333MHZ. It's running at the slower speed because your CPUs don't support it. But, If it were me, and it was, I'd chuck it all and fill six slots with equally sized 1333MHZ RAM.. My Ram supplier since 1986 has been:

http://www.datamemorysystems.com/ap...06ghz-md771ll/a-cto-mid-2012-memory-upgrades/

I am SO NOT a FAN of OWC!!!!!!

And in this day and age why would you even consider buying an HDD? I have seven SSDs and two old HDDs in my cMP. The HDDs are only used for archiving. My Main SSD is a Samsung M.2 mounted on an Angelbird Wings PCIe Card.

Lou

 

[Larry-K]

The stock RAM that you have is 1333MHZ. It's running at the slower speed because your CPUs don't support it. But, If it were me, and it was, I'd chuck it all and fill six slots with equally sized 1333MHZ RAM.. My Ram supplier since 1986 has been:

http://www.datamemorysystems.com/ap...06ghz-md771ll/a-cto-mid-2012-memory-upgrades/

I am SO NOT a FAN of OWC!!!!!!

And in this day and age why would you even consider buying an HDD? I have seven SSDs and two old HDDs in my cMP. The HDDs are only used for archiving. My Main SSD is a Samsung M.2 mounted on an Angelbird Wings PCIe Card.

Lou

No heatsinks?

 

[h9826790]

Agree with the others, go for 2x X5680 is easy, self upgradable, and a nice big boost to your current config.

Check your activity monitor, if RAM is enough, then not a problem. Otherwise, a good way to upgrade is get another 4x8G to make it 6x8, which can utilise the triple channel architecture, and leave 2 slots for future expension.

No idea about Adobe CC, and I am not that familiar on the Nvidia card, but it seems the "top end card" not always the best choice for CUDA. e.g. Few 750Ti may be cheaper and better than a single 980Ti for computation.

Have a PCIe SSD as a scratch disk or temporary storage for the working project is a good idea to remove the HDD bottleneck as well.

Anyway, IMO, don't go for OWC, they are expensive but not necessary give you the best product. You may able to upgrade to 2x X5680 with only 1/3 of their price.

 

[flowrider]

No heatsinks?

RAM on a 5,1 cMP does not have heatsinks, either factory Apple or third party. AFAIK the only cMP RAM that required heatsinks was the 3,1.

Lou

 

[orph]

When you say at what point is it slow, in the time line or just renders ?
you need to have a look at activity monitor to help see what your problem is.

if your time line is slow/lagy it might be that your drive set up is not optimized, i noticed you have 2 1TB HD's which will relay slow things down once you hit 4K so might be worth looking at a faster setup for media files ie SSD's maybe in a pci card.
you may get the biggest speedup from a pci card with 1 or 2 1TB SSD's for media files.

also do you have a SSD scratch drive? (and thats a dedicated drive just for scratch) and have all of the adobe pref's set up for optimal ram use ect with correct scratch drive chosen? (adobe has some good help files for that on there site)

rendering is mostly CPU dependent, when you render do you watch activity monitor to see if all cores are being used and at the same time it's worth checking disc use and ram use.

RAM use, do you watch activity monitor to see how you ram is used, you need to check if your going past the ram installed in your system, if you are it will slow things down a lot.

what video codec are you using ? some codec's are a lot faster to work with than others.
might also be worth looking at proxy workflows, there's nothing wrong with transcoding your files to say 1080P in a good codec, working on them then once your done move to the 4K files and do final grading.

also helps to not have to meany apps on in the background.

ps do you grade at the start of the project or the end?

this is worth a look https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-Premiere-Pro-CC-Multi-Core-Performance-698/
codec can relay change cpu efficiency
once you go past 6cores most the time you see slow downs with real slowdowns past 8c so if you do do a cpu upgrade the dual 4c 3.46 cpu is the sweet spot for speed (and price)

edit
an adobe white paper on cc
http://www.adobe.com/content/dam/Ad...dfs/Adobe-Hardware-Performance-Whitepaper.pdf
& the help file
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/optimize-photoshop-cc-performance.html
ps are you doing round trips from AE?

 

[Larry-K]

RAM on a 5,1 cMP does not have heatsinks, either factory Apple or third party. AFAIK the only cMP RAM that required heatsinks was the 3,1.

Geez, you're right, but it has been at least a couple of years since I loaded up my 5,1s.

I guess my 3,1's heatsinked RAM leaves a lasting impression.

 

[Silencio]

Some older sets of PC3-1066/PC3-1333 DIMMs did ship with heatsinks. I have quite a few sets that came with them installed. None of the DIMMs I've bought within the past few years come with them, though. Even still, the heatsinks on the PC3 DIMMs are much, much thinner than those found on the Mac Pro 1,1 - 3,1's FB-DIMMs.

I echo one of the comments about about buying all matched DIMMs. 6x8GB DIMMs will give you 48GB of RAM, which should be more than sufficient for Premiere CC.

I don't think Premiere CC makes heavy, heavy use of CUDA or the GPU's VRAM. I think a GTX 980 Ti would be overkill, unless you also do a lot of work in After Effects.

A simple PCIe to SATA6 carrier card is a pretty cheap way to wring some more performance out of your SSDs, and free up some drive slots for your bigger, slower spinning disks.

Replace that Vertex 2 drive soon. They are old and very slow, in my experience.

 

[ActionableMango]

I don't know if heat "speaders" count as heatsinks, but I have those on the 5,1 ram I bought from DMS last year.

 

[Will.henri]

Wow ! Thanks everybody. So much to learn. I'll have some homework to do if I want to get a better picture of my setup.

How you know when you have use all your ram or to understand that you HDD is too slow when you look the activity monitor?

From now, I've start collecting info about how to change the cpu. I feel pretty safe to buy it on ebay and do the change.

I'll try to understand my activity monitor and if I need some RAM i'll go with the 6x8gig option. Someone can tell me why is better to full 6 slots? The 2x 8gig that i've bought from OCW is 1066 or 1333? Can I just buy 4 more 8gig somewhere or I have to begging from scratch and get 6x 8gig 13333?

For the drive, what I've understand for now is that I should use :
- 1 SSD as a boot drive.
- 1 SSD as a scratch drive
- 1 Pcie SSD with 2 SSD in Raid0 as a media drive

Am I correct ?

When you say at what point is it slow, in the time line or just renders ?
you need to have a look at activity monitor to help see what your problem is.

if your time line is slow/lagy it might be that your drive set up is not optimized, i noticed you have 2 1TB HD's which will relay slow things down once you hit 4K so might be worth looking at a faster setup for media files ie SSD's maybe in a pci card.
you may get the biggest speedup from a pci card with 1 or 2 1TB SSD's for media files.

also do you have a SSD scratch drive? (and thats a dedicated drive just for scratch) and have all of the adobe pref's set up for optimal ram use ect with correct scratch drive chosen? (adobe has some good help files for that on there site)

rendering is mostly CPU dependent, when you render do you watch activity monitor to see if all cores are being used and at the same time it's worth checking disc use and ram use.

RAM use, do you watch activity monitor to see how you ram is used, you need to check if your going past the ram installed in your system, if you are it will slow things down a lot.

what video codec are you using ? some codec's are a lot faster to work with than others.
might also be worth looking at proxy workflows, there's nothing wrong with transcoding your files to say 1080P in a good codec, working on them then once your done move to the 4K files and do final grading.

also helps to not have to meany apps on in the background.

ps do you grade at the start of the project or the end?

this is worth a look https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-Premiere-Pro-CC-Multi-Core-Performance-698/
codec can relay change cpu efficiency
once you go past 6cores most the time you see slow downs with real slowdowns past 8c so if you do do a cpu upgrade the dual 4c 3.46 cpu is the sweet spot for speed (and price)

edit
an adobe white paper on cc
http://www.adobe.com/content/dam/Ad...dfs/Adobe-Hardware-Performance-Whitepaper.pdf
& the help file
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/optimize-photoshop-cc-performance.html
ps are you doing round trips from AE?

Thanks for the links, i'll look at them carefully !

It's pretty slow in the export or the render. I can play my timeline in real time and all's good most of the time.

Again, sorry for my noob question but what's a scratch drive ? (I understand that is a drive dedicated for the scratch, but what is a scratch file?)

I do the grading at the end with Lumetri.

I use to transcode my file in AppleProres but in my last project I've try to use directly the .MXF and I don't think it is a good idea! Way more slower thant usual.

I've attach a screenshot of the activity monitor that've made on my last export! I forgot to do one with the RAM. Next time !

 

[orph]

scratch drive, is just choosing a drive for pp to dump temp files.
https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pr...specifyscratchdiskstoimprovesystemperformance

if you can play your timeline in real time why render? you dont need to for export.
export is mostly cpu dependent depending on workflow. (+ you gtx680 is fairly fast)
do you have AE round trips in the timeline ? that can kill export speed i think tho i dont use cc (im on cs6)

also do you know creativecow.net there relay good for help, id be tempted to ask for help there too.

im not shore but i think some codec's are faster than AppleProres in adobe apps but im not 100% shore,

you do much more complex video projects than me ^^ i just play with video
ps activity monitor https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201464

 

[Will.henri]

scratch drive, is just choosing a drive for pp to dump temp files.
https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pr...specifyscratchdiskstoimprovesystemperformance

if you can play your timeline in real time why render? you dont need to for export.
export is mostly cpu dependent depending on workflow. (+ you gtx680 is fairly fast)
do you have AE round trips in the timeline ? that can kill export speed i think tho i dont use cc (im on cs6)

also do you know creativecow.net there relay good for help, id be tempted to ask for help there too.

im not shore but i think some codec's are faster than AppleProres in adobe apps but im not 100% shore,

you do much more complex video projects than me ^^ i just play with video

Oh sorry, I can play it in real time when I do the first edit but after I've put some effect and color, I've to do a render if I want to see or evaluate the work correctly.

When I use AE, I usually export from AE and import the new file in Premiere but I don't use the '' go the AE '' option that give you the opportunity to have your Premiere timeline in AE.

If you wanna see some work I do www.vimeo.com/vaudevillegc

 

[orph]

is that a screen shot of an export or preview render ?
do you use Adobe Media Encoder to export your videos

^^ some nice videos,

are you exporting to the same drive as your source files?

your cpu looks like it's not doing much, Adobe Media Encoder still in cc?

edit noticed i was saying compressor i started with FC6 some habits die hard

 

[Will.henri]

Sorry for the late reply.

Its a screen shot of a render !
I don't use Media Encoder, i've heard that he's much slower.
Yes i'm exporting on the same drive (I know that I have to setup my drive better, I'm still searching for a good setup)
I've start with FCP7, I understand

 

[orph]

id relay try media encoder,

thats a screen shot of me encoding a short video (vary simple video from a holiday so not a good example of a more complex time line maybe) but dose show the cpu is working

that is an export not a render tho, something is wrong with your setup id gess because your render seems to be using at most 1 cpu core.

in your budget you can move to 1TB SSD's for media drives which is not to costly and at the least will relay speed up working on the timeline, a PCI card that can take two 1TB SSD's is the fastest option there and if your geting the SSD's the PCI card wont add much to the total price

in PP cs6 scratch drive is both in preffs->media & project -> project settings -> scratch disc (you can set that one when you start each new project)

read up on it before you mess with scratch settings, info is in the manual and on adobes site

 

[Will.henri]

I try to export with Media Encoder right now, we'll see

Thank for the time with the SSD. Also, i found this : https://forums.adobe.com/thread/662972