MP 1,1-5,1 Upgrading from a 1.1 to a 5.1, Video Editing Build

[ADDvanced]

I've been rocking a maxxed out 1.1 for 8 years, but thanks to the mac pro upgrade facebook group, I pulled the trigger on a 3.33 hex core today, for $250. Came with 32 gigs of ram and a 5770 and a 1tb HHD. Missing 2 drive trays.

I mainly use Youtube/iMovie/Premiere/After Effects/Photoshop.

I'm looking for advice on setting up the drives.... let me know what you think.

First, here is what I have for drives:

In the 1.1:
240 gig SSD in my 1.1 (10.11 primary system)
240 gig SSD in my 1.1 (windows 7 for cad/rendering)
"The Vault" 500 gig HHD x 2 in Raid Mirror in drives 3/4 (probably gotta go, doesn't hold much anymore, pretty full)

External:
Two of these:

- Iomega Ultra (HD is dead, so empty, available for whatever) FW800 & eSata Ports
- Iomega Ultra 1TB (84 gigs left) FW800 and eSata Ports

One of these:

- G Tech G RAID 4TB (2 Partitions, a 2 TB time machine backup, and a 2 TB "vault backup" (I backup the Vault Drive on here (500tb) and use the rest as temporary storage

Current plan is to Keep my 1.1 as a windows 10 box.

Next post will be what I'm thinking about doing....

 

[ADDvanced]

I guess I'm a bit unclear on how to set this thing up, for maximum workflow speeds. I like to dump footage onto one big drive with plenty of space. I want to boot from an SSD. iMovie, which I use most of the time since it's quick/easy, I'm not really sure how it handles files. It feels like no matter where I dump the footage onto drives, when I 'import it' into a project, it always copies it all somewhere, into the iMovie library.

Right NOW, I have my boot drive running the OS on my 240 gig SSD in slot 1. I am dumping my footage onto my Vault Backup 2tb partition on an external drive w FW800. This is not ideal, and laggy. I want to make this as snappy as possible. I know the PCIe NVME cards are fast... should my iMovie library be on my main boot drive? Or should I put the library on an NVME solution, but boot from the SSD in the first slot?

Potential Plan, Feedback Welcome.

Mac Pro 1.1
Radeon 5770
240 gig SSD Windows 10
500 gig RAID Mirror (backup for windows drive)

Mac Pro 5.1
Radeon 7970
240 gig SSD most modern osx I can run.... where should I put this? Drive slot 1? NVME PCIE card?
That leaves the other 3 slots open... ?

4tb G Raid and the 2 other externals have eSata, which is supposedly faster than FW800... but if I'm not working from them, I guess it doesn't matter much.

How would you build out the drive system for maximum performance? The largest project I've worked on was probably 3-400 gigs of footage.

Thanks for any advice. Cheers!

 

[kohlson]

See the stickies at the top of the Mac Pro Forum, such as this.
You'll certainly want: Mojave (update firmware), NVMe, something like an RX580.
You'll probably want: USB3, SATA sleds that are drilled for larger drives.

 

[ADDvanced]

Yeah I saw the sticky, and the UMUG, and I'm reading as much as I can.... obviously NVME is fastest... but I guess what I'm unsure of is... if I boot off the SSD drive, once hte OS is all loaded into the ram, would it make more sense to use NVME as a working/scratch disk? Or does it make more sense to put the OS on the fastest possible disc, then put the work/scratch disc in the bays?

Really looking for overall drive system advice. There is a ton of tech articles about speed. Just confused as to OS vs Storage vs Scratch.

 

[kohlson]

would it make more sense to use NVME as a working/scratch disk

What I do in my 4/5,1 cMP which is used almost entirely to edit 4K video with FCPX, is use a 1TB NVMe on an inexpensive PCIe adapter. 1400+ R/W. IOPS like there's no tomorrow.

HDDs hold lots of TBs, but getting it there, and reading it is slow, relatively speaking. For a block of data, the operation must wait for the platter to come around and the head to get in position. There's none of that on SSDs. IOPS on spinning disks are measured in 100s; on SSD in 100s of Ks. So there is plenty of performance available for the OS and apps like FCPX on a single SSD.

It might make difference to have a separate scratch disk when booting/running off SSD, but I haven't seen anything on it. And I have no complaints about how my set up works.

 

[KeesMacPro]

+1 for a NVMe working disk .
Depending on the budget i'd put the OS on a SATA SSD or install e.g. a I/O Crest SI-PEX for 2 blades :1 OS and 1 work/scratch (or e.g. a HighPoint with 1 blade OS and 3 for data/scratch).

 

[krakman]

You can add a reference AMD vega 56 gpu without modification search the forum for details.

Its possible to run a AMD radeon VII gpu too but you need to fiddle the settings - details also on this forum

 

[ADDvanced]

No need for a card at this time, I think the 7970 will work fine.

@Kees/Kohlson: That's kind of what I'm thinking. I mean, if you put the OS onto the NVMe drive, other than launching programs or booting, there is no benefit, correct?

Example: if I'm editing, no matter what the program, the data would go from the NVMe disk, to the ram, to the processor, then maybe back to the NVMe as it renders.... and from there, I can export/compress anywhere, at which point the CPU is the bottleneck, not the transfer speeds.

The Boot/App disc would have no bearing on actual performance, once loaded, correct? If so I'll just keep my 240 gig SSD for now, and shove it into the 1st slot.

Now I'd like to figure out the NVME working disc... 500 gigs is probably fine. Honestly 240 would be fine 80% of the time. Would prefer to find a card that also has some eSata ports on the back of it, if possible.

 

[ADDvanced]

omfg. NVME and PCIe controllers is so confusing. So many friggin variables. Still soaking in info... like a sponge... or a wall.

Because I am frustrated with the storage info at the moment, random question... can I upgrade my CPU to a SINGLE dual CPU cpu? Ex: Can I put a X5690 in my machine? Just wondering, so if I found a dual card at a later date, I could just buy one more CPU. Just curious.

 

[AlexMaximus]

omfg. NVME and PCIe controllers is so confusing. So many friggin variables. Still soaking in info... like a sponge... or a wall.

Because I am frustrated with the storage info at the moment, random question... can I upgrade my CPU to a SINGLE dual CPU cpu? Ex: Can I put a X5690 in my machine? Just wondering, so if I found a dual card at a later date, I could just buy one more CPU. Just curious.

My base model used to be the same 3.3 hex you have. Over the years I replaced it with the Xeon X 3,46 hex you mentioned above.
The big advantage is actually the ability to put 64 GB ram into the single tray. With the standard 3.3Ghz, you can NOT do that.
So if RAM is a limiting factor, with this you can boost the max RAM ceiling to 64GB.
Having said that, the CPU is actually not the bottleneck in your case. It's fun to do, but I would put the focus on the SSD issue at first.
With the right PCIe adapter and a fast SSD, you will experience way more speed than with the incremental and tiny CPU boost.
The single most important speed boost in my case was the I/O crest card. Its a bridge PCIe card with two slots, that removes the SATA SSD speed block of 500MB/sec and gets you 2500 - 2800MB/sec depending on the used SSD. Apple was kind enough to provide full NVME support for the 5.1 in Mojave, so this is by far the super sweet spot.
You have no idea what a good purchase you made with the 5.1. There is plenty of life in this Pro Machine left. It's extremely reliable and the available mods are fun. Last week I ordered a mac flashed Thunderbolt card (Titan Ridge) that will give me full Apple native Thunderbolt capability to hook up TB2/3 PCIe card expansion chassis for more PCIe cards. The sky is the limit.
One last word on the SSD speed. The type of SSD you use directs the speed and purpose of it. Coming from a time before the NVMe possibility on the 5.1 machines, the very best and fastest SSD used to be an AHCI PCIe SSD blade in slot #2. The AHCI technology was based on the SATA protocol and provided about 1580MB/sec read speed. This is to this day the fastest boot option out there. The new non-SATA NVMe SSDs are faster and larger but are still slightly slower in boot times because of the NVMe firmware boot sequence. This is really minor, but I thought I mentioned it here. However, even if you put a newer NVMe blade in a single PCIe card adapter in slot #2, it will not perform faster because of the single adapter that limits it to 1580MB/sec. To break that ceiling, you need a bridge card that expands it to 2800MB/sec. You see, very often the PCIe adapter is the speed blocker, not the actual SSD. You need to sync both to achieve optimum speed in everyday operations. For a decade-old computer, this is remarkable beyond belive to achieve SSD speed that is usually only possible with newer 4500++$$ expensive iMac Pros.

 

[KeesMacPro]

omfg. NVME and PCIe controllers is so confusing. So many friggin variables. Still soaking in info... like a sponge... or a wall.

This may help (post #1):

PCIe SSDs - NVMe & AHCI

This is a general info thread for blade SSDs that can be used in the Mac Pro. This is a WikiPost so anyone with the proper credentials may edit it. NVMe SSDs can be used as a boot drive in the MP5,1 and MP6,1 with the latest firmware installed (beginning with version 140.0.0.0.0 for MP5,1 and...

forums.macrumors.com

You can add a reference AMD vega 56 gpu without modification search the forum for details.

PIXLAS mod is necessary...
Works fine from High Sierra upwards, best drivers Mojave and newer.

can I upgrade my CPU to a SINGLE dual CPU cpu?

If your MP came with a single CPU tray ,yes.
If you'd like to change single>dual or vice versa, you'll need 2 CPU trays.
The CPU tray SMC-number has to match with the Backplane SMC-number:
-MP 2009 (flashed to 5,1 or not) 1.39f5
-MP2010/2012 1.39f11
If you upgrade the CPU to Westmere 6-core, the RAM will run at 1333mHz instead of 1066mHz , if supported by the RAM modules.
More detailed info here:

Mac Pro CPU Compatibility List

Bokkow and I have created a Mac Pro CPU compatibility list. The intent is to cover all relevant and compatible CPU upgrades for all Mac Pros. These are asked about over and over and over again, so I thought it would be nice to have it all in one place. Constructive criticism, corrections to...

forums.macrumors.com

Now I'd like to figure out the NVME working disc... 500 gigs is probably fine. Honestly 240 would be fine 80% of the time.

Prices for 250 and 500GB blades are about the same...
If the 250GB are still available.

 

[kohlson]

I mean, if you put the OS onto the NVMe drive, other than launching programs or booting, there is no benefit, correct?

Nope. MacOS is quite busy, and so are the apps. In FCPX editing, background rendering is going on all the time. There is a misconception that all the disk does is get things started, and then stands back while everything runs in RAM. Have a look at Activity Monitor some time.

NVME and PCIe controllers is so confusing.

Baseline is very simple. Buy an NVME SSD listed on the sticky thread, and a cheap adapter ($20) with a heat sink. Plug and play. Note this assume you are running latest 144 firmware. If 1400 MBps isn't enough for you, do some research on switched adaptors. It's all there in the sticky.

can I upgrade my CPU to a SINGLE dual CPU cpu? Ex: Can I put a X5690 in my machine? Just wondering, so if I found a dual card at a later date, I could just buy one more CPU. Just curious.

Do you mean, in you current single CPU system can you replace the current CPU with another? Yes. If at a later date you find a dual CPU tray, you should be able to buy a similar CPU to populate both sockets.

IMHO, don't over-complicate things. For example, going from 3.33 to 3.46 will add somewhat less than 10% CPU (not overall) performance. Perhaps better to put that money into a METAL GPU, enabling 10.14.6. But perhaps the CPU boost may be worthwhile for Adobe editing apps - are these CC?

 

[ADDvanced]

What I’m frustrated with is all the random gotchas. I’m reading some of these cards boot, some get stuck in boot loops if you try to boot into windows 10, some won’t let you sleep because the power gets cut to the pcie slots (?)

I need bootcamp. My plan is to run the os off from a 240 gig ssd. Probably just shove into drive bay, since it sounds like the speed on the os wouldn’t affect workflow speed.

Then there are the non nvme options. I don’t do 4k editing, so is it even worth it? Would a pcie ssd adaptor at 1500 be plenty for 1080? That’s 5x faster than sata 2.

Thanks for all your responses so far. Learning a lot.

 

[ADDvanced]

Oh and no cpu upgrades at this time. Just curious. I have a 7970 in my 1.1 that is metal compatible. Swapping that later today to install Mojave. Want to run Catalina so I don’t have to mess w it for years.

 

[ADDvanced]

Having said that, the CPU is actually not the bottleneck in your case. It's fun to do, but I would put the focus on the SSD issue at first.
With the right PCIe adapter and a fast SSD, you will experience way more speed than with the incremental and tiny CPU boost.

Agreed. This 5.1 has a 2 tb HDD and it's slow, feels slower than my 1.1 My plan is to run OS/Apps from one drive, and put all the working files on another. I might seem like I'm repeating myself here, but there is ZERO advantage to SSD shoved into a stock sata 2.0 drive slot vs PCIE card other than booting faster, correct? Once I have an app open, and loaded into the ram, then any video data going to/from the working drive, that should be the fastest drive in the system, right? So either NVME raid or SSD raid cards, right?

The single most important speed boost in my case was the I/O crest card. Its a bridge PCIe card with two slots, that removes the SATA SSD speed block of 500MB/sec and gets you 2500 - 2800MB/sec depending on the used SSD. Apple was kind enough to provide full NVME support for the 5.1 in Mojave, so this is by far the super sweet spot.

Still all good w Catalina? Which card do you have, exactly? No boot issues? Does it cause any issues if I want to run bootcamp as well?

This may help (post #1):

PCIe SSDs - NVMe & AHCI

This is a general info thread for blade SSDs that can be used in the Mac Pro. This is a WikiPost so anyone with the proper credentials may edit it. NVMe SSDs can be used as a boot drive in the MP5,1 and MP6,1 with the latest firmware installed (beginning with version 140.0.0.0.0 for MP5,1 and...

forums.macrumors.com

Thanks, I will check it out. Also going to pull the 7970 from my 1.1 after posting this, and swap the GPUs in both machines.

Nope. MacOS is quite busy, and so are the apps. In FCPX editing, background rendering is going on all the time. There is a misconception that all the disk does is get things started, and then stands back while everything runs in RAM. Have a look at Activity Monitor some time.

Baseline is very simple. Buy an NVME SSD listed on the sticky thread, and a cheap adapter ($20) with a heat sink. Plug and play. Note this assume you are running latest 144 firmware. If 1400 MBps isn't enough for you, do some research on switched adaptors. It's all there in the sticky.

Got it. So put my OS SSD into a single PCIE card (1400MBps blows the hell out of sata 2). Those cards are pretty cheap, thanks!

Then I need to figure out my working drive. The 2TB hd on sata 2 will be fine for actual storage/archiving/time machine. Could I just run another PCIE card and another SSD for a working drive? Would NVME provide an even bigger boost? Remember, I'm not interested in 4k. Most people watch stuff on phones, lol.

 

[AlexMaximus]

Oh and no cpu upgrades at this time. Just curious. I have a 7970 in my 1.1 that is metal compatible. Swapping that later today to install Mojave. Want to run Catalina so I don’t have to mess w it for years.

Here is the link to the card I have:

Syba Dual M.2 M-Key NVMe Ports to PCIe 3.0 x16 Bifurcation Riser Controller - Support Non-Bifurcation Motherboard (SI-PEX40129)

The I/O CREST SI-PEX40129 is a great accelerated secondary storage solution for any workstation with true PCIe 3.0 x8 bandwidth (x16 Interface). It has two M.2 NVMe ports to accept two NVMe M.2 SSDs, so each NVMe M.2 SSD has dedicated PCIe 3.0 x4 bus bandwidth. It delivers transfer speeds 20 time...

www.amazon.com

There are also very good reviews on the card on amazon rating itself from Mac Pro users. Another good thing about this card is the possibility to add a resistor for low noise operation. I did that and I am very happy with the final result.

However, as indicated in your last post, you seem to miss the Bootcamp obstacle in Mojave and Catalina in general.
There is no official Bootcamp capability any more since High Sierra. You can only use Bootcamp if you install a flashed MVC card or install Open Core. This has become a major pain, so be careful and go into further reading not to run into an ugly one-way trap.

 

[ADDvanced]

I have windows on a separate ssd. Does it really matter ? Isn’t the boot screen done in the efi, not the OS on the disk?

 

[kohlson]

Got it.

Maybe, but I'm not so sure. From my reading of your responses, I don't think so. Maybe you do and I'm not getting that.

You seem to be stuck in OG thinking. That is, ALL OS and app activity occurs in Ram once everything is loaded. That was the case many, many revs back, but no longer.

Getting an NVME for booting only is probably a waste. In fact, a SATA SSD may boot faster (though only by a few seconds). Yes, even over SATA 2. Throughput performance (MBps) is not IOPS performance.

The wonderfull thing about 5,1 cMP is that you can configure it in all sorts of ways. You can mix and match - you're just a checkbook away from happiness.

 

[ADDvanced]

I thought you guys were saying that once the OS is loaded it would still matter to have faster access?

 

[kohlson]

I think I am saying a couple of things, but let me preface it with: If your working environment is SSD, you'll be happy enough.

For me, I think 2 things enable smooth 4K editing: GPU with hardware acceleration (RX580 or better); SSD. If I changed my workflow (worked with proxy, for example) this may not be required. Subject of another thread.

I don't know this (I haven't tried it) but you could sprinkle SATA SSDs out and about your system: boot, cache, workspace. RAID them, whatever. Probably would be about the same performance as the same system with a single NVME. To me, a single, large-ish NVME is an ideal solution. Also, makes economic sense. The adapter is $20. A 256GB NVME is $50 (though prices vary). For $60 more you can get a 1TB NVMe - one and done. Free up SATA slots for what they were designed for - big, slow spinners. Of course people outfit their cMPs to fit their needs, so your mileage will certainly vary.

 

[h9826790]

TBH, storage speed isn't that important if we use hardware decoding to do H264 / HEVC 4K editing.

My wife sometimes make 4K screen recording on her Surface Studio 2. And I don't even copy the file onto my Mac, but simply use SMB to link to her computer (she only use wifi to connect her computer to the network), then drag the H264 4K video directly to the FCPX timeline on my cMP and edit it.

It works flawlessly, and I can't feel any difference then editing local video.

Besides, I sometimes edit the 4K HEVC video that stored on my low end NAS (with just gigabit ethernet). The video bitrate usually just below 100Mbps, iStat shows only need ~15MB/s network speed when playing the timeline. Even 2 layers of such high bitrate 4K HEVC videos only require about 30MB/s. Storage speed really doesn't matter.

Since I use HWAccel to edit H264 / HEVC directly, not ProRes. I don't need to wait for import. No need to use proxy / optimised media, no need to wait for rendering. Just edit and play the timeline.

For H264 / HEVC, if not too many layers and too high bitrate, simply use a powerful GPU's HWAccel can already do the job easily. In that case, storage performance almost doesn't matter (unless you are using some ridiculously low performance SD card etc)

I just make a screen recording to show what a single processor cMP can do, if we have a powerful GPU, and use HWAccel.

In the video, I leave my 4K HEVC videos on my NAS, which is connected via ethernet. iStat shows the downloading speed in real time (I will lead you to read that in the video). You can also see the CPU usage / storage demand on the iStat menu bar. I also let you see the clock down to second to show you that everything was captured in real time.

There may be some drop frame in FCPX occasionally, that's because I was using my Radeon VII to capture the screen at 4K at the same time. It affect the editing performance a bit. In reality, I won't record the screen when doing video editing, and the timeline playback should be completely smooth.

 

[ADDvanced]

Huh. Well I ordered matching pcie cards and two 256 gig nvmes; os in one and scratch on the other. Should be here tomorrow.

 

[ADDvanced]

Okay.... so.... drives and cards arrived today. Unsure how how I want to proceed yet.

Is there ANY advantage to running catalina over Mojave? I read that Catalina will break my wifi card. But at the same time, I'm pretty pissed that my 1.1 is becoming outdated via software, so my initial thought was to run the most modern possible OS so it stays useful the longest.

Right now, the 5.1 has a 2TB HDD running High Sierra, and I partitioned it off to a 256 gig chunk and installed Mojave. Runs great. Was thinking about just installing the NVME 256 gig card onto the PCIE card, and reinstalling Mojave on that, then using the 2TB drive as Media (mp3s, edited movies, photos, etc).

Then use the other 256 gig NVME/Card as a work/scratch disk.

So... decision time. Mojave vs Catalina.

 

[KeesMacPro]

So... decision time. Mojave vs Catalina.

I'd install all the new hardware and Mojave and get it up and running fine first.
Mojave is known as very stable and less hassle than installing Catalina.
Later on you can always give Catalina a go e.g. through OC and keep Mojave or replace it.

 

[ADDvanced]

Should I preemptively install OC now?