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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Our Z800 is too buggy with CS6 - need another Mac Pro - which one?

Fabian Benninghoven

Fabian Benninghoven

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Hi guys,

after a few month of testing the Z800 (8-core, 32GB Ram, FX3800, Raid-0) and the Adobe Production Premium CS6 suite we decided to switch back to a Mac Pro, even if it's a 2010 / 5.1. The Windows PC is very uncomfortable with handling software / new hardware. Cuda doesn't work well, WMV encoding produces errors. Its only small things which makes the Z800 unstable. No firmware updates are available to have more than 2GB HDDs as internal drives.


To keep it short:

What kind of Mac Pro we should buy to have a "similar" one to the Z800. Atm. we also work with Mac Pro 2.1 from 2008 (8x 3,0 Ghz, 12 GB Ram) and these are very slow but stable. What you think about this one:


[h=1]Apple Mac Pro 8-Core 2x 2,4 GHz / 32GB Ram/ ATI Radeon HD 5770 / 2 TB HDD/ Westmere 5.1 -> 2499 Euro (3127 $)[/h]Is this price ok?


Thanks!



If somebody is interested in buying our Z800, please drop me a line.
 
I'd try to figure out what was going on with the Z800 first.

No use throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Z800 are certified CS6 platforms.
 
Z800 should be pretty stable with CS6. One issue you will have with CUDA is the FX3800 graphics card, it's pretty dated and is not much for CUDA. In fact, it could be contributing to the instabilities. This also dates your Z800 back to 2008 or early 2009 at the most. What are the rest of the specs/details of this system?

Funny thing is that right now Premiere CS6 is a bit less quirky and a bit more stable on Windows than it is on Mac. :/

That Mac Pro you listed is the entry-level 8-core model. Not bad for applications that can use all CPU cores. However, for apps that depend on fewer cores and more CPU speed, they usually don't perform so well at 2.4GHz. Or at least they don't perform any better than an iMac or Mac Mini or Macbook Pro with a mobile CPU in the current generation (Ivy Bridge) with faster (1600MHz) RAM.
 
It's an Adobe product. I'd be more surprised if it didn't have issues every now and then...

I WISH that they upped the price a bit and bug tested things more. If there were an "Adobe Premiere Really Pro" or "After Effects Really Pro" product, I'd buy that in a heartbeat. The feature list is always good. The implementation is often just a little rushed. This is probably the reason why they could have so many cool features - because they didn't allocate enough time to each one.

The sad part is that they often don't go back and actually do it right in the next version. They just move on to the next feature for the next release. Leaving their apps littered with semi-working, semi-implemented features. It has always been their biggest weakness. Sometimes I think they actually have a deal with Autodesk or Avid to make sure their software doesn't get too competitive :)

Thank heavens Premiere Pro seems to be avoiding that - Mercury Engine is being consistently improved, CUDA is getting better, etc. But they're another version or two away from being rock solid in my opinion. Your mileage may differ of course.

This is actually a positive thing because I believe that they are moving in a good direction, as opposed to other pieces of software Adobe makes where they seem to just fall apart more and more with each release (acrobat, et al :).

But yeah, changing to Mac isn't going to fix this. Your best bet would be to find out exactly what machines the Adobe developers use and match that hardware as much as possible, because at least you know they kinda bug test on that.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
Z800 should be pretty stable with CS6. One issue you will have with CUDA is the FX3800 graphics card, it's pretty dated and is not much for CUDA. In fact, it could be contributing to the instabilities. This also dates your Z800 back to 2008 or early 2009 at the most. What are the rest of the specs/details of this system?

Funny thing is that right now Premiere CS6 is a bit less quirky and a bit more stable on Windows than it is on Mac. :/

That Mac Pro you listed is the entry-level 8-core model. Not bad for applications that can use all CPU cores. However, for apps that depend on fewer cores and more CPU speed, they usually don't perform so well at 2.4GHz. Or at least they don't perform any better than an iMac or Mac Mini or Macbook Pro with a mobile CPU in the current generation (Ivy Bridge) with faster (1600MHz) RAM.
Click to expand...



Hi Jeff,

I know that, after trying almost everything you decided to go into the PC world again. Nevertheless, your experience is enormous. In an hypothetical situation where you were going back to the Mac world today and you had to build a Mac Pro setup for Resolve......can you tell us which your configuration will be...what Mac Pro......what card combination you will use....what PCIe expander and even what storage. Your advice, I think will very useful to a lot of Redusers.

Thanks
 
Nicos Ambatzis said:
Hi Jeff,

I know that, after trying almost everything you decided to go into the PC world again. Nevertheless, your experience is enormous. In an hypothetical situation where you were going back to the Mac world today and you had to build a Mac Pro setup for Resolve......can you tell us which your configuration will be...what Mac Pro......what card combination you will use....what PCIe expander and even what storage. Your advice, I think will very useful to a lot of Redusers.

Thanks
Click to expand...

The best setup for Resolve is PC, not Mac. The video card and expansion options are much better.

BTW, we are 90% Mac at work (even our render farm is a bunch of the latest 12-core Macs, which is rare) and have an 8-core Mac Pro with Quadro running Resolve. I'm not anti-Mac. Just realistic.

I think you're blaming Windows for Adobe bugs.

If you have a recently modern CPU, plenty of RAM, put a good nVidia GFX card in it and do a fresh install of Windows, you should be good.

But it sounds like you just want an excuse to buy a Mac instead :)

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
No Bruce, I am not trying to find any excuse to stay in Mac. I just wanted Jeff's opinion who is already decided to go PC. I consider his opinion more objective now. That's all. I don't want to get involved in this endless and pointless ''war'' between PC and Mac lovers. Both have their pros and cons. Quite a few years back I didn't want to hear anything about Mac, then with Red I went to Mac and now I am using both. For me what matters is the job to be done as best, as quickly, and as more reliable it can be. But I respect someone who obviously spend so much time to test and try almost everything.
 
Nicos Ambatzis said:
Hi Jeff,

I know that, after trying almost everything you decided to go into the PC world again. Nevertheless, your experience is enormous.
Click to expand...

Actually, I never left the PC world, always been there. I've probably built an average of 8 or 10 workstations/servers per year over the past 5 years and bought a few more, plus notebook systems, on top of that.

In an hypothetical situation where you were going back to the Mac world today and you had to build a Mac Pro setup for Resolve......can you tell us which your configuration will be...what Mac Pro......what card combination you will use....what PCIe expander and even what storage. Your advice, I think will very useful to a lot of Redusers.

Thanks
Click to expand...

Hmmm... I don't really feel the Mac Pro is that good of a solution for Resolve moving forward at this point. I guess you could say that the yin and yang don't equalize when you start factoring in costs of what is needed to make it all work its best. Hopefully this will change in the coming year when Apple releases their next pro system offering.

But to answer your question, the best Mac Pro setup right now for Resolve can be approached with a couple different theories. I'm going to address this in regards to Resolve 9 as it should be out of beta here in the next month or two. It offers some advancements that help out with some of the limitations we face with the Mac Pro and equivalent generation PC workstations, where PCIe slots and lanes are at a premium.

A current model (2010) Mac Pro 5,1 is obviously the best there is. Get the 12-core (dual 6-core Xeons) model. Speeds available are 2.4, 2.66 or 3.06 GHz and each one is a noticeable performance jump and an even more noticeable jump in price. The 3.06 GHz is actually the ideal upgrade here. Sure it's more expensive, and the 2.66GHz upgrade may be half the price of going all the way, but it's also less than half the upgrade and offers the least relational value and performance.

I would recommend 48GB RAM. Possibly 96GB, but it depends on what all you want to do with the system.

With Resolve 9, you no longer need one GPU for the UI and another for node acceleration via CUDA. Which is a good thing and I would advise against purchasing a PCIe expander unless you absolutely needed it and could ROI that extra $2500+ expense in the few short months we have between now until a newer, better system comes along. The current model Mac Pro is obsolete in many ways, resale value on them, if you're buying new now, is going to be fairly low. When the new ones arrive in another 5 to 7 months with Ivy Bridge Xeons, lots of the current generation towers will be hitting the used market.

So, I guess this would be my Mac Pro configuration for a performance system to run Adobe CS6 and/or Avid MC 6.5 and Resolve:

Mac Pro 12-core 3.06GHz
96GB RAM -- Buy from OWC, it will save you $600
OS/apps drive located in lower optical bay -- fast 10Krpm HDD or decent 3Gbps SSD.
4 x 2TB or 3TB 7200rpm HDDs in primary HDD trays, configured as RAID-0
Slot-1: Video card (Quadro 4000 or possibly GTX570, maybe GTX580)
Slot-2: RED Rocket
Slot-3: ATTO R680 SAS/RAID host
Slot-4: BlackMagic Decklink HD Extreme 3D+


If you really feel the need to do the PCIe expander, then both Cubix and Cyclone have great offerings. The interface for the expander would go in Slot-2 and then you would place the Rocket and a second GPU in the expander, perhaps a SATA card like the CalDigit 6GU3, then you can add a couple 6Gbps eSATA and USB3.0 ports to the system.

It seems that the GTX4xx and GTX5xx GPUs are working well under OSX Mountain Lion. They still don't support EFI functionality like option-booting to select a device to boot the system from. But it seems the driver support is there for them once the OS is loaded. Looks promising. There's always the chance that support could be broken with future releases as the track record for unapproved video card support over the past several OSX point releases has been erratic.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
Actually, I never left the PC world, always been there. I've probably built an average of 8 or 10 workstations/servers per year over the past 5 years and bought a few more, plus notebook systems, on top of that.


Hmmm... I don't really feel the Mac Pro is that good of a solution for Resolve moving forward at this point. I guess you could say that the yin and yang don't equalize when you start factoring in costs of what is needed to make it all work its best. Hopefully this will change in the coming year when Apple releases their next pro system offering.

But to answer your question, the best Mac Pro setup right now for Resolve can be approached with a couple different theories. I'm going to address this in regards to Resolve 9 as it should be out of beta here in the next month or two. It offers some advancements that help out with some of the limitations we face with the Mac Pro and equivalent generation PC workstations, where PCIe slots and lanes are at a premium.

A current model (2010) Mac Pro 5,1 is obviously the best there is. Get the 12-core (dual 6-core Xeons) model. Speeds available are 2.4, 2.66 or 3.06 GHz and each one is a noticeable performance jump and an even more noticeable jump in price. The 3.06 GHz is actually the ideal upgrade here. Sure it's more expensive, and the 2.66GHz upgrade may be half the price of going all the way, but it's also less than half the upgrade and offers the least relational value and performance.

I would recommend 48GB RAM. Possibly 96GB, but it depends on what all you want to do with the system.

With Resolve 9, you no longer need one GPU for the UI and another for node acceleration via CUDA. Which is a good thing and I would advise against purchasing a PCIe expander unless you absolutely needed it and could ROI that extra $2500+ expense in the few short months we have between now until a newer, better system comes along. The current model Mac Pro is obsolete in many ways, resale value on them, if you're buying new now, is going to be fairly low. When the new ones arrive in another 5 to 7 months with Ivy Bridge Xeons, lots of the current generation towers will be hitting the used market.

So, I guess this would be my Mac Pro configuration for a performance system to run Adobe CS6 and/or Avid MC 6.5 and Resolve:

Mac Pro 12-core 3.06GHz
96GB RAM -- Buy from OWC, it will save you $600
OS/apps drive located in lower optical bay -- fast 10Krpm HDD or decent 3Gbps SSD.
4 x 2TB or 3TB 7200rpm HDDs in primary HDD trays, configured as RAID-0
Slot-1: Video card (Quadro 4000 or possibly GTX570, maybe GTX580)
Slot-2: RED Rocket
Slot-3: ATTO R680 SAS/RAID host
Slot-4: BlackMagic Decklink HD Extreme 3D+


If you really feel the need to do the PCIe expander, then both Cubix and Cyclone have great offerings. The interface for the expander would go in Slot-2 and then you would place the Rocket and a second GPU in the expander, perhaps a SATA card like the CalDigit 6GU3, then you can add a couple 6Gbps eSATA and USB3.0 ports to the system.

It seems that the GTX4xx and GTX5xx GPUs are working well under OSX Mountain Lion. They still don't support EFI functionality like option-booting to select a device to boot the system from. But it seems the driver support is there for them once the OS is loaded. Looks promising. There's always the chance that support could be broken with future releases as the track record for unapproved video card support over the past several OSX point releases has been erratic.
Click to expand...



Hi Jeff,

THANKS ! THANKS ! THANKS ! Most helpful. !
 
Maybe i should reinstall all the software and get a new GTX 580 card. But the thing is... i changed the GFX card from the FX3800 to GTX285, the same problem with encoding, when CUDA is enabled. If i buy a new card, maybe the problem is still the same. This is the config:

• Z800 with 2x Xeon Quadcore X5672 @ 8 x 3,2 Ghz
• 36 GB Ram
• 2x 300 GB SAS & 2x 2TB in Raid-1
• USB 3 card
• Nvidia Quadro FX 3800 / Nvidia GTX 285

I'm tired of testing...
 
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