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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 :)

Workstation upgrades, adobe, switch to bootcamp...Jeff Help Please

Peter Osinski

Peter Osinski

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Ok so here's the current situation. We have the following workstations which I would like to run windows 7 on with adobe software and potentially resolve if we don't stick with speedgrade. I am going to list the systems, my ideas for upgrades, and please anyone chime in with your thoughts.

Edit 1

2 x 2.66 6 core intel xeon (12 cores, 24 threads)
64GB RAM
ATI Radeon HD 5870 (1GB VRAM)

Upgrades:
1. Upgrade Graphics Card to Quadro 4000
2. Faster I/O card for shared storage (need help with this)
3. SSD Boot drive to Windows 7
4. Adobe CS6.5/7
5. Davinci Resolve Lite

Edit 2

2 x 2.66 Quad Xeon (8 cores, 16 threads)
8GB RAM (4x 2GB)
ATI Radeon 4870 512GB VRAM

Upgrades
1) Upgrade graphics to Quadro 4000
2) Faster I/O card
3) SSD drive to Windows 7
4) CS6.5/7
5) Add 4 x 8GB sticks for total of 40GB of RAM (2.5GB per thread)

Station 3,4,5

A couple of Power PC's. I could easily just set this up as our output to beta tape / dvd duplication station with final cut 6 for playback. Moving along.


So here are some questions....

1. If I am running bootcamp to windows 7 will I have problems with mercury playback or cs6?
2. given that I will be using a mac in bootcamp is the quadro 4000 the cheapest card I can get for mercury playback in cs6?
3. I need a fast but not super expensive shared storage solution that I can also install on these macs, run in bootcamp, and will also be able to run on new windows machines when we buy them. What do you suggest for editing multiple streams of proress 422 hq, quicktime animation codec, DNG's, and redcode raw? Can I use Esata for shared storage so 3 people can access data at once?
4. For the shared storage I would like to have a 2 Raid 5 Towers. Tower A will be the one that everyone can access and work from, tower B will be what Tower A backs up to everynight. What do you suggest? We will likely need to have 12-24TB of active storage per raid.
 
Peter Osinski said:
1. If I am running bootcamp to windows 7 will I have problems with mercury playback or cs6?
2. given that I will be using a mac in bootcamp is the quadro 4000 the cheapest card I can get for mercury playback in cs6?
Click to expand...

With these questions seeming to be the most important aspect of your shift, I've not been able to get Mercury or CUDA working within Bootcamp and Windows 7 (32 or 64bit) and either the Quadro 4000 or 4800. Others may have found answers, but I finally gave up and went back to OS X.

Is there any specific reason for leasing OS X for Windows when CS6 is available on both?

Tim
 
Apple has not devoted near the attention they should have to pro users in the last few years. FCPX, long periods between upgrades, nothing faster than fw800 on existing mac pros! This is not what pros need.


If you weigh the reasons I listed above with the cost savings/ ability to customize (more gpu's, more pcie slots) of PC there is no contest. When we buy new computers they will be PC's so I would like to start using windows now and purchasing windows software to ease the transition/ not have to buy 2 copies of cs6
 
Except that you indicated that you're not replacing the Mac Pro's, your'e just changing OSes on the existing systems.

If your long term plan IS to replace the Mac Pros and go full force Windows, then the HP Z8XX family of workstations running CS6, Media Composer, or ACID / Vegas are seriously untouchable. Add the HP DreamColor monitors and you're in the realm of serious performance and exacting display quality.

BTW - I use both platforms.

Tim
 
Right now we have 2 usable systems and 3 editors. I have been working mostly at night and will eventually start working during the day at which point we will need to purchase another computer which will be a PC. We will also need to upgrade to purchase adobe production premium for that computer.

It would be easier for everyone if we could convert to the 2 macs to windows 7, run production premium on all of them, have cuda supported mercury playback on all of them, and have fast shared storage between all of them. What do you think I could do to make this happen?
 
The only issue I see with your plans is that I've not had success getting Mercury / CUDA working with my Quadro cards in Bootcamp. Hopefully, someone else has had success and can provide input. Otherwise, I do know that Vegas 12 and ACID Pro 7 run like thoroughbreds in Windows 7 under bootcamp on my Mac Pro 4,1.

To the shared storage design, you will either need to go to a Fibre Channel infrastructure, or plan on being limited to what your network infrastructure will permit with a NAS or iSCSI solution.

Tim
 
If you are going to be running Windows exclusively, I would suggest selling the Mac Pro towers and building a couple new PC's. If you want to run both OS's, then the hardware is fine, the GPU cards are always an issue. You would be better served with a GTX570 or perhaps a 580 as there are a couple models of those that will operate within the power profile of the Mac Pro. There are hacked versions of the GTX570 that will run properly under OSX with full power management support, otherwise you're best to stick with that Quadro 4000. As for Tim's comment on the CUDA / Mercury support under Bootcamp, I'm not sure what may have went wrong when trying with the Quadro 4000 it should work and I have it working here. The Quadro FX4800 is a different beast though, it's not officially supported for CUDA anyway as it's considered a legacy card and is rather old at this point, circa 2007. You can't use the Bootcamp supplied video drivers if you want proper CUDA support.

Shared storage is a hassle unless you want to spend big bucks. Take a look at the CalDigit SuperShare systems. There are also some SAN solutions that are relatively inexpensive that work over fibre channel or 10G ethernet. There are some 10G cards available for under $200 that work quite well, just don't expect them to deliver 10G performance -- they tend to hover around the 3~4Gbps range. Pretty crappy, but low overhead and they over a 3X+ boost over a standard Ethernet port or similar to an FC connection and some of the 10G NAS / SAN storage units are cheaper than their FC counterparts. A lot of that depends on your budget. Personally, I would skip the whole shared storage thing and use fast local storage for each workstation. Then exchange files as needed via Gig-E or eSATA storage that can be swapped. The amount of $$$ spent to gain decent performing shared storage is huge compared to localized systems that will be much more capable and responsive. Not only that, but the apps aren't too keen on multiple people working on the same files and projects at the same time anyway. Regardless of what Adobe and others might claim about collaborative abilities and all that.

You have probably heard the old adage about tech items, "Reliable, Fast, Cheap. Pick any two.". When it comes to shared storage, you get to pick one of those options. ...I'm still waiting for someone to prove me wrong.


Cost and performance-wise, I would probably recommend the CalDigit SuperShare with two of their HDPro towers configured to do as you like. You should also have another backup layer on there somewhere like a good LTO system to back up your backup RAID tower. Just sayin'
 
FCP6 ??? I hope you mean 7... Heh.

Look on eBay for the seller named MacVidCards. He's one of about two people on the planet that actually make their own EFI ROMs for nvidia cards and do it right. You can get a GTX570 from him that will work properly in OSX. The cards will also work fine in Windows. If you use an off the shelf GTX570 card, it will work fine in Windows, but will not have proper power management support in OSX and it won't come out of low-power operation where the card is crippled to PCIe v1.x bus speeds and doesn't ramp GPU clock or performance under load.

This is, of course, a hacked solution and not guaranteed to work under all circumstances or with future OSX and other software updates. However a GTX570 will give you about a 25% boost in performance for GPU/CUDA functions over a Quadro 4000. The exception to that is if you spend most of your time doing Pro OpenGL work in apps like Maya. Then you will want the Quadro.
 
No I mean 6...

We have the 2 macs but I will probably be bringing in my own pc workstation as well. Based on what your saying tell me if this will work.

1. Purchase and Install 2 gtx570's from macvidcards, and 2 Esata cards (looking for reccomendations) into the 2 mac pros we have (I'm assuming I can use the power cables currently powering my ATI cards for the gtx570's)
2. Install Bootcamp onto SSD drives running windows 7 on the 2 mac pros
3. Install windows 7 adobe cs6 on the 2 mac pros in bootcamp
4. Buy 3 Raid towers formatted NTFS connected to computers as Esata and plug them into whichever computer we need to use
5. Backup active projects to external drives
6. Long term storage in cloud or LTO-tape
 
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