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Mac Pro 2010 Advice

Tony Augustinack

Tony Augustinack

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Hi there just looking for some hardware advice,

I am in need of a new Mac Pro and trying to decide what is the most economical, and if the extra cores are really necessary for the work I do. I mainly work in the Adobe Suite, along with the FCP suite, and occasionally working with a bit of Maya. I have been reading benchmark scores and reading up other forums, but just wanted to see if anybody had any real world insight before I pull the trigger on one.

There is quite a few different options, but I have narrowed it down to these two,

One 3.33GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon “Westmere” (6 cores) w/32gb of third party RAM. ATI 5870 (appox. $4860)

Two 2.66GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon “Westmere” (12 cores) w/32gb of third party RAM. ATI 5870 (appox. $6000)

Also am planning on using two G-tech es Pros in a raid 5. Along with a rocket in the future.

http://g-technology.com/products/g-speed-es-pro.cfm

Any personal experience or advice would be awesome. Thanks!

Also since I will be using an external raid, what do people do with the internal HDD bays? Archiving/Storage or nothing?
 
Are you working predominately with Red footage and the occasional DSLR?
 
As of now actually I am working with DSLR footage, but will be working with RED footage once Scarlet is released.
 
First off I have a dual G5, and the fastest machine I use is an old 8 core... my information is from research, not experience.

Unless you are planning on a lot of multitasking I'd probably get the six core.

Its within 1% of the speed of the 12 core using current application benchmarks- the important exception being 3D rendering applications, where the 12 core is nearly twice as fast.

So, if Final Cut, Premiere, AE, Motion, Color, Red applications or Resolve are your applications then get the six core.

If Modo, Maya, Lightwave, or Cinema 4D are key applications, get the twelve core.

Compressor should be faster on 12 cores- but I haven't seen any tests that indicate it is for most work. Maybe Redusers can help.

I'd get less RAM and invest in a Quadro 4000 card- especially if Resolve is in your future.
 
Tony , I went through the same process, I definitely recommend the 6core at 3.33ghz with 24gb ram to take advantage of triple memory , I would also recommend getting an ssd to replace the boot drive , owc has an excellent 256gb mercury pro drive. it makes a huge difference to the speed of apps launching.

most apps aren't written for and can't take advantage of 12 cores. you'll get a lot more mileage out of the higher speed 6core. I bought 4 x 2terabyte caviar black drives with 64mb cache creating one raid 0 drive , $600 total and I"m getting between 500 to 600MB a sec
 
Thanks guys! I appreciate the advice. I am leaning towards the 6 core.

Bing, Are you using a internal raid and if so which raid card?
 
Dont buy The Six Core, buy the 12 core, and 24gb Ram, 2GB/core. If you predominately currently work with DSLR footage, which is not very demanding but work with Maya 64 bit why would you buy the slower machine.
Obviously your workflow is more with Adobe than with FCP. Get the 12 core, set up two internal Raids, one for the system and one for editing. Try that out for few months, then upgrade to a Redrocket card, another 8GB ram and an Nvidia Cuda Card. You will have a machine you can continuously scale for at least 4 yrs. In a desktop Adobe post environment you will surely be multitasking. These products will be continually updated and they will demand more system resource. Make a future proof investment.
my 2 cents
 
Don't buy the 6-core. Re-sale value is already terrible on them and you are effectively cutting your RAM capacity and bandwidth in half! The memory controllers are incorporated into the CPUs and so by not installing the second CPU, you eliminate the secondary memory host and memory banks. Not only that, but if you ever decide to add another CPU, the extra CPU cooler and memory board are super-expensive from Apple Parts and there's no guaranty that they'll even be able to supply them.

If you want to save money, step down to the 8-core or buy an overstock 2009 Nehalem model.
 
Great advice and thanks guys! I appreciate everybody's two cents. Okay so from my hearing right, definitely go with the 12 core, which I was kind of thinking would be the right choice as an investment.

Okay so your saying an internal raid over external? And should I get the Apple Raid card or what? (I've heard not so good things out there about the apple card)
 
I'm stepping in and woudl recommend to consider boying an nVidia card instead of the ATI. The ATI is great, but the nVidia uses the Cuda Cores in the Adobe suite. As of now, we don't know what kind of features will be in the next Final Cut Suite.

Plus, nVidia cards are better supported by Avid (in case you go with an Avid software in the future).

Which one to buy, I don't know. I've heard you can make Fermi cards workquiet easily on the Mac Pro (as the driver structure is nearly the same for Windows and stuff).


 
jeff is right the only need for a 12core is for Maya. otherwise for DSLR work, you should get the Nehalem beasts with An Nvidia CUDA card.

I have personally only done one project on the DSLR so I can't give you great advice there. I Am more comfortable with the Red-Cam.

No don't get the Apple Raid Card. External vs Internal its really your choice. For DSLR work in PProcs5 you can get away with a soft internal raid, no hardware. But for a Red workflow definitely go External.
 
Alright thats a good option! What about working with R3Ds, would you still say the 8 core nahalem or go with the 12 core? I defiantly plan on picking up a Cuda Card.

Okay well heres the deal my current setup is a 2008 2.8 ghz octo-core with 14 gb of ram and a 6TB raid-0 (software). A 2TB 7200 boot drive. I am handing it down and upgrading. But anyways I get dropped frames in running FCP and CS5, and it takes a while to get a sequence running, I can hear the drives working really hard to load up the clips (all ProRes 422 or XDCAM EX). Yesterday I did a AJA test and got a read write speed of 130/170 and now I am getting 230/240, so it just seems to be a bit inconsistent. Any idea where the bottle might neck be? I was thinking it was the software raid....?
 
You're best off with the Westmere series processors if you're going to work in Adobe CS5 or Resolve. And with the Mercury Engine in CS5, the more cores, the better. Or at least to a point. It seems to scale quite well to about 8 or 10 CPUs and then the performance benefits really fall off. There is a slight performance advantage to the 6-core Westmere CPUs over the 4-core versions as they have larger cache sizes. But overall, you have to consider your priorities in your system. The 8-core Westmere (2x4-core) at 2.4GHz is $1500 cheaper than the 12-core 2.66GHz model. To me, that makes a heck of a lot of sense to save that $1500 and apply it toward something else. That's half the price of a "battle tested" RED Rocket card right there. Or it will pay for sticking a 2TB 7200RPM WD Black-X HDD in all 4 drive slots plus a nice upgrade to 16 or 24 GB of RAM. ...Buy the RAM and HDDs from a third party. I say RAM from OWC and HDD's from NewEgg or Mwave.

I also recommend the nVidia card for CUDA support. It's a must if you're running CS5 and/or Resolve.
 
Tony Augustinack said:
Alright thats a good option! What about working with R3Ds, would you still say the 8 core nahalem or go with the 12 core? I defiantly plan on picking up a Cuda Card.

Okay well heres the deal my current setup is a 2008 2.8 ghz octo-core with 14 gb of ram and a 6TB raid-0 (software). A 2TB 7200 boot drive. I am handing it down and upgrading. But anyways I get dropped frames in running FCP and CS5, and it takes a while to get a sequence running, I can hear the drives working really hard to load up the clips (all ProRes 422 or XDCAM EX). Yesterday I did a AJA test and got a read write speed of 130/170 and now I am getting 230/240, so it just seems to be a bit inconsistent. Any idea where the bottle might neck be? I was thinking it was the software raid....?
Click to expand...

Well your first problem on your 2008, configure for 16GB- 2GB/core always no odd numbers, I assume you raided 3 drives to get 6TB right? Thats a lot of power drain on the system. Go down to 4TB raid 0.

Now you certainly have something wrong with your CS5 and FCP configuration, because even from the specs you listed it should run Prores and Xdcam files just fine.
 
Okay Ill try that. Most of the time I don't have any problems, just occasionally I will get dropped frames, a restart usually does the trick.

Okay first off thanks for the advice Jeff, your awesome! Yes It makes a lot of sense what your saying with going with the 2.4 8 core over the 2.66 12 core, save the money for BTRedRocket and HDDs and RAM. My only concern is will the 8 core be as "future proof", at least for a few years compared to the 12 core. Should I even bother letting this play a factor?
 
I recently go the 6 core and love it. Working great and the increased clock speed is more important to me than more cores.

Mainly using it for Red Rocket transcodes and FCP, with some AE thrown in.

Very happy.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
If you want to save money, step down to the 8-core or buy an overstock 2009 Nehalem model.
Click to expand...

Agreed--these are really cheap right now:

http://bit.ly/2009_8-Core

Torrey
-----------------------------------------------
Torrey Loomis
President & CEO - Silverado Systems, Inc.
(916) 760-0032 • FAX (916) 404-5258
torrey@silverado.cc
Web http://www.Silverado.cc
Blog http://silveradosys.blogspot.com
Twitter http://www.twitter.com/silveradosys

Build your own RED Rocket system: http://bit.ly/7F4QA1
 
Tony Augustinack said:
Okay Ill try that. Most of the time I don't have any problems, just occasionally I will get dropped frames, a restart usually does the trick.

Okay first off thanks for the advice Jeff, your awesome! Yes It makes a lot of sense what your saying with going with the 2.4 8 core over the 2.66 12 core, save the money for BTRedRocket and HDDs and RAM. My only concern is will the 8 core be as "future proof", at least for a few years compared to the 12 core. Should I even bother letting this play a factor?
Click to expand...

Your current 2008 configuration is plenty powerful, it has lots of room for upgrading and improvement. you can save money by just buying the peripheral accessories ie, more ram and faster hard drives, and an nvidia card for now. Save your money for the release of a scarlet. You would ultimately end up spending close to $10,000 on your current dream mac configuration. For extra uninstall delete all home programs and utilities you don't use or need, leaving only the core post products. backup all your personal files on a cheap external usb drive and clean the system cache.
 
Yeah I know your exactly right it is plenty powerful, but I have an editor that will be doing work for me and he needs a mac, so I am losing it and need to replace it. Make sense? I am just trying to decide what makes the most sense, I like Jeffs idea with saving a bit of money and using it towards accessories! I'm thinking on going with the 2.4 westmere or a 2009 carryover. Thanks everybody for your input, I appreciate it!
 
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