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Upgrade 5.1 cpu from 6 core to 12 core?
- Thread starter bobbydaz
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If you're using Adobe, i would first recommend that you put some strong nVidia and use CUDA.
I've never used Adobe CS or CC extensively, but the guys, that i know, who make a living out of PP and AE are using only nVidia GPUs.
For 6 vs 12 core comparison take a look at this page form BareFeats - http://barefeats.com/cmp12c6c.html
It's a great thing having maxed out 12 core cMP, but i really don't know how much speed will you gain in your workflow (although I'm very interested in public opinion on this).
It's unlikely to be cost effective to buy a dual CPU tray to upgrade from a single CPU model as they are are & overpriced. If you really want to do it then you are better off selling your single CPU system & buying a complete dual CPU system.
no.
no.
^^
https://www.pugetsystems.com/all_articles.php look here at bences even PP and AE do not get much from dual cpu's
get a fast scratch disc
no.
^^
https://www.pugetsystems.com/all_articles.php look here at bences even PP and AE do not get much from dual cpu's
get a fast scratch disc
For all computer work, including photography and design work/illustration plus gaming, I'd say:
For some specific computer work (often video related) like transcoding, camera RAW decoding, 3D rendering, output rendering and so on... you'd make a trade off and give up some single thread performance for massive gains in these typically multi threaded areas. This is why you'd look at (8) 10 core solutions and upwards.
In terms of graphics, high resolution gaming is an obvious driving factor. Most gamers can probably look at any number of benchmarks to see what they need.
A growing number of 3D renderers like Octane, Arnold, Blender, VRAY and more plus simulation engines like TurbulenceFD benefit greatly (or rely completely) on GPU computing power—often CUDA.
Video editing software like FCPX, DaVinci Resolve and Premiere Pro plus a number of compositing software suites can also benefit greatly from beefed up graphics. In FCPX and DaVinci it's pretty linear and you'll get twice the frame rate on a struggling computer if you add a second card.
In your case, design software and photography tools like Illustrator, Photoshop and Lightroom or Affinity's Photo and Designer apps also make use of gfx cards to accelerate the interface, support things like smooth zooming and some screen rendering tasks—but the difference between a modern price/performance card and a high end graphics cards might not even be noticeable. Extensive use of a certain plugin might make an exception, but... I'd say it's an exception.
The classic Mac Pro (especially 4.1 and 5.1) has been, and still is, a fascinating computer since despite its increasingly weak single thread performance, it's still doing quite well in multi threaded environments. Especially since we've been able to work around slow internal HDD bays and hack graphics. I mean, for $1000 you get two maxed out CPUs (for that generation) and two new RX 480 cards that will do really well in FCPX and Resolve (but no CUDA). You can't beat that.
I'll shed a tear when it's time to let my cMP go. In fact, I probably won't let it go, but keep it as a render cow or backup/server or something.
- fastest possible single thread performance (since you get minimum 4 cores anyway, you're going to get basic multi thread performance too).
- fast drive access via SSD.
- not too little RAM (but you often don't need as much as some think you do)
For some specific computer work (often video related) like transcoding, camera RAW decoding, 3D rendering, output rendering and so on... you'd make a trade off and give up some single thread performance for massive gains in these typically multi threaded areas. This is why you'd look at (8) 10 core solutions and upwards.
In terms of graphics, high resolution gaming is an obvious driving factor. Most gamers can probably look at any number of benchmarks to see what they need.
A growing number of 3D renderers like Octane, Arnold, Blender, VRAY and more plus simulation engines like TurbulenceFD benefit greatly (or rely completely) on GPU computing power—often CUDA.
Video editing software like FCPX, DaVinci Resolve and Premiere Pro plus a number of compositing software suites can also benefit greatly from beefed up graphics. In FCPX and DaVinci it's pretty linear and you'll get twice the frame rate on a struggling computer if you add a second card.
In your case, design software and photography tools like Illustrator, Photoshop and Lightroom or Affinity's Photo and Designer apps also make use of gfx cards to accelerate the interface, support things like smooth zooming and some screen rendering tasks—but the difference between a modern price/performance card and a high end graphics cards might not even be noticeable. Extensive use of a certain plugin might make an exception, but... I'd say it's an exception.
The classic Mac Pro (especially 4.1 and 5.1) has been, and still is, a fascinating computer since despite its increasingly weak single thread performance, it's still doing quite well in multi threaded environments. Especially since we've been able to work around slow internal HDD bays and hack graphics. I mean, for $1000 you get two maxed out CPUs (for that generation) and two new RX 480 cards that will do really well in FCPX and Resolve (but no CUDA). You can't beat that.
I'll shed a tear when it's time to let my cMP go. In fact, I probably won't let it go, but keep it as a render cow or backup/server or something.
Well put. I use my cMP for CPU rendering (Keyshot), and the multicore performance per $ is tough to beat.
Indeed. With 20500 score in GB4, when thinking about an upgrade to such an old computer, I'd like to see 50-100% increase in performance to experience that nice 'next gen' jump.
But even to break 30000, while still maintaining good single thread performance—looking at breaking 4500—is not going to be cheap.
I have a scenario where I'll pick up an old 6.1 Mac Pro with D700s and upgrade the CPU, but they are still asking too much for the used trashcans.
Ya I hear ya. I can't justify the price of a 12 core 6,1 for pretty much equivalent performance (I think) with my use cases.
An HP z with two E5-2683s would give me roughly double the performance for a reasonable amount of $ but I'll take the performanace hit to stay on OS X.
Just praying Apple gives us something in the next few years or I'm afraid I'll be forced over to windows.. which would really suck.
Some software is written to take advantage of dual cpu's some prefer singles. Depends on the software
Thanks for the advice. It seems 12 core upgrade is pointless for my needs. But if I upgrade the stock GPU Radeon 5770 to say an AMD R9 280 am I going to see a noticeable difference in Photoshop performance or is it a waste of money? I have 24gb of ram which I could double to 48, but again is that overkill?
Here are a couple of examples that say (in their conclusions) otherwise about Adobe apps:
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-Photoshop-CC-Multi-Core-Performance-625/
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-Premiere-Pro-CC-2015-3-CPU-Comparison-849/
So while it works for some apps, it doesn't work well for others...
AFAIK, for Photoshop, only few operations can really use GPU to accelerate. The software still mainly CPU single core performance limiting.
For RAM, usually the more the better. But if you are not working with huge image, 24GB RAM should be more than enough for general photoshop usage. Anyway, you can check activity monitor if the memory pressure still green in colour.
No, they emphasize on a well-known fact: adding more and more cores does not make the software work faster in a linear way. The results would be the same if they used a single 20-core CPU.
Not worth it. I've worked with Adobe for years and am also a post production and visual effects supervisor and the gains u will get in day to day useage are negligible. However, a dual CPU setup will let u benefit from more RAM slots and THIS is where u will see serious differences in render times, especially in After Effects. For Premiere Pro if u want large performance jumps get a decent GPU with tons of cuda cores and VRAM. I max out the RAM to 64gigs on all my 12 cores and even though they can take up to 96 gigs (OSX) it's too much of a capital
outlay to go that route. 64 is to me the perfect number especially when working in apps like AE, PP, C4D, , Nuke, Realfkow etc
outlay to go that route. 64 is to me the perfect number especially when working in apps like AE, PP, C4D, , Nuke, Realfkow etc
Take the time to monitor your 'memory pressure' for a few days while working with applications you'd like to boost. You do that with the 'activity monitor', for example.
24GB is fine for a lot of things, but 'photoshop work' is a very general term so...
The reason why you would buy more RAM is to reduce the need for the computer to write to disk. If you have too little RAM and the computer must write to disk all the time, this will be a major slowdown of the system. Eliminating this bottleneck with more RAM is what people talk about when they say you "can't have too much RAM". In even simpler terms they will say "more RAM will increase the speed of your computer".
I am pretty annoyed with the last phrase (and you see it a lot). Once your computer doesn't have to write to disk anymore (and this can happen around well before 16GB or RAM) it will give you zero benefit to add more RAM. You can throw money at your computer and add 128GB of RAM (should your computer support it) but it won't do anything if the computer doesn't need it.
In contrast, computational power as found in the CPU or GPU, depending on task, will actively ADD speed to your machine. They will get **** done faster. RAM won't speed anything up, but too little will make stuff slow down (not the same thing). Does this make sense? CPU and GPU are engine parts. RAM is oil. You can drown your race car in oil, but without an engine it will still be the slowest car in history—top speed 0 mph. That same race car can brute force, drag its ass even without oil for a while, but will cut and grind to a halt too— 0 mph. A computer needs some RAM, though, so don't take it too literally…
I see a scenario where your computer is "in the green" at all times with 24GB of RAM. Then adding more won't help.
Regarding gfx, I stand by what I said above. Might add some boost here and there. Probably nothing you will notice. But then there's the placebo effect and there's "peace of mind". You might feel better if you upgrade it. In my experience, you need pretty significant upgrades before you really notice your computer being faster—especially in day to day work like office apps or even photo/design apps. The change from HDD to SSD was one of those sweet things. I'm sure gamers will notice smaller boosts in fps too, since they are constantly limited by CPU/GPU up to a certain fps level. Every increase in fps might count there, up to 60 or so.
At some point you will need to change to a whole new system with faster single thread CPU, FSB, disk and GPU. Then you'll get that jump. I'd save up for the new iMac if I were you. That will be plenty responsive and beautiful to look at for the stuff you do.
I would be of the same opinion, however my 8-core just doesn't seem to be able to allocate more than 51% of 24 Gigs of memory during rendering in AE 2015. Which is kinda odd, maybe my clips are too short to fill more RAM?
You won't notice a difference in standard desktop tasks. If you look up power user in the dictionary there is a picture of me, right now I have 50+ windows open, 100+ browser tabs, and 70GB of RAM in use. I can only manage to keep 1.5 cores fully queued with tasks on my dual socket X5690 under normal everyday conditions. On occasion I can use up 4 cores, but 99% of the time the other 8 cores are simply running idle burning electricity.
Sounds normal to me. How do you feel it's odd?
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A good example of how varied computer use is in real life that general recommendations only takes a user "so far". Someone else has a render cow with 16GB of RAM, 44 cores and think they have the perfect configuration.