New Mac Pro or Upgrade 2009 Mac Pro

[riggieri]

Hey Guys

Trying to plan out purchases in the future. I am looking at either buying a new Mac Pro cylinder or upgrading my 2009 Mac Pro to a 2010 Mac Pro. I use this system primarily finishing feature films in Resolve and AE, and editing. Its current specs sit at..

8 X 2.66GHZ
24GB Ram
240GB SSD boot

GTX570 2.5GB
REDRocket (Or GT120)
ATTO R680 Connected to a 800MB/s RAID5
4TB internal RAID 0 for scratch and render.
Decklink 3D+

I am considering doing the firmware hack on this 2009 Mac Pro making it a 2010 Mac Pro and dropping in 2 6 Core Xeon X5680's 3.33GHZ or X5675's 3.06GHz. Also I would upgrade to 48GB of 1333MHz RAM.

But I'm not sure what this will get me. Resolve handles great in this machine already, except when it ones to R3D decoding. It only chocked on dissolves, but i am limited to 12-18 fps on full debayer render out.

I have a REDRocket-X on order but with GPU decoding in the SDK, not sure if it is going to be worth it, especially if i upgrade to a GTX780. I could start using software debayer during grades, and having the extra cores and speed will help there. I think all said and done, I am looking at $2000 to upgrade Or...


Buy a new Mac Pro and gamble how well Resolve preforms on it. I would need to get a a High Speed storage connected to it, and would need expansion. I am thinking i would be in for about $8000 but don't foresee it providing that much performance over what I have and would be about equal with the upgrades.

I might buy a lower End New Mac Pro to test out in the smaller suite, but not sure if it is ready to move my main suite too.

Just considering options, I feel it makes sense to hold onto the 2009 for a year or too more to maximize the ROI.


Cheers
Matt Riggieri
Digital Cave

 

[jimj740]

Matt,

I cannot answer your question, but may be able to help.

I have a 2009 and have upgraded it as follows:

2 x5680s
48 GB of 1333 RAM
5 Micron M500 SSDs, one as boot and 4 as striped SW RAID
eSata card and external 4 disk bulk array
7950 OC card flashed for EFI.

I love this machine - and upgrading was the right choice for me since I got a VERY good deal on the x5680s as a pull from servers at work that were depreciated and sold basically as scrap.

The CPU upgrade is a PITA, and not for the faint of heart. The FUD about ruining your machine/damaging the sockets is really overblown, you would really have to be a gorilla to do this. That said, getting the CPUs and all RAM channels to work is an art and takes finesse; I had to adjust the tightness of the heat sinks at least 5 times until I got it right. It is absolutely rock solid once you get it, and my main mistake was overtightening - with no damage at all to the sockets or CPUs.

If there are any freely available benchmarks or tests you would like me to run I would be happy to.

-JimJ