ultimate mac for REd ?

[doondoon]

I'm going to be getting a new Powermac in the next couple weeks.
I've already got a Kona 3 card, Kano 5 bay esata raid drive and a 26" Panasonic HD monitor.

With respect to working with RED footage (in redcine and FCP) I'm looking to build the best mac based system I can. I have about 6K to spend.

Graphics Card
Internal Drives
RAM
other ?

I've been looking at the velociraptor drive by WD and also the Seagate Cheetah for the OS to live on. I know there are other internal drive options for the mac but am not sure how this would help speed things up when dealing with RED footage. If at all?



thanks,
michael

 

[Harrison Diamond]

Well, most people I know (and me) have gone for the NVidia 8800GT for the graphics card, though there's a new ATI card coming, too, at a lower price point. It's supposed to be better at some things, and not as good at others.

As far as RAM goes, for the Mac Pro you have to install matched pairs of DDR2 FB-DIMM RAM. The current MP runs DDR2-800. I strongly recommend only buying Apple-certified RAM, as one of the biggest causes of system problems is bad quality RAM, and the heat tolerances on the MP's memory are pretty strict. I purchase mine from RamJet, other companies I've dealt with before are Data Memory Systems and OWC. Crucial also has good RAM, but they have had some...interesting...pricing practices in the past and I avoid them for that reason. It is best to install matched sets of 4 RAM modules, however, since you get 256-bit something or other...it's supposed to improve performance. So for best results, either use 4 or 8 of the same modules.

Internal drives...that's a tough one. Seagate Cheetahs should work, but only if you buy the Apple Mac Pro RAID card that enables use of SAS drives and hardware RAID. the WD Velociraptor is currently a no-go. It is a 2.5" drive with a 3.5" heatsink bolt-on, however this sink does not position the drive properly to interface with any standard backplane bay connectors. There are rumors of a Velociraptor that will rectify this, but I haven't seen anything firm.

Two things to consider are reliability and speed. Reliability seems to have been an issue on some of the larger drives, if you believe the consumer reviews you see on Newegg and the like. Personally, since I don't currently need enormous amounts of space (until I get a RED and Scarlet), I use Western Digital Caviar SE16 640GB 7200RPM drives. They are extremely fast, benchmarking on par with the WD Raptor X I boot from, and the consumer reviews indicate it is extremely reliable. In my daily use the pair I have installed are quiet, fast, and bulletproof as far as reliability goes.
If you get the Mac Pro RAID card you will gain the flexibility of hardware RAID and the ability to use SAS, however I am not certain if, like in the XServe, it limits you to using all-SAS or all-SATA at one time.

I hope this helps some!

 

[Ketch Rossi]

This is what I have just ordered:


MAC PRO
Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Harpertown” processors
8GB (8x1GB) (800MHz DDR2 fully-buffered DIMM ECC)
500GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s 7200-rpm hard drive
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB
2 x Apple Cinema HD Display (30" flat panel)
One 16x SuperDrive
AirPort Extreme Card (Wi-Fi)

This configuration was a suggested one by Peter, and it is configured with both RED and Still Photography applications in mind.

I agree that this is the best base configuration to start off with and fully upgradable, and also the use of external Drives seems to be a must.

The Graphic card chosen is considered a must, as well as the choice of memory, speed chosen been that there is no considerable difference in from the much higher priced 3.0 and 3.2, with a speed gain not reasonable to excuse the price tag.

Good luck in your purchase.

ciao

 

[doondoon]

great. thanks guys.
beyond what you've outlined what other equipment could I add to make things speedier (not including scratch... can't afford it).
I've read that people are seeing between 1 and 1.5 frames per second render time.... this seems very slow to me ?

 

[Nicholas Shields]

You are right about the processing times - I'm seeing an average of 18:1 in my renders. Currently, the problem lies more in inefficient software than it does hardware speed. I have two machines - one is more than twice as fast as the other when rendering out of AfterEffects. Yet both render 18:1 using any Red software. As things begin to be smoothed out more by the Red software team, I believe all machines will see dramatic increases in render speed. By the way, Silverado make incredibly fast macs.

Good Luck

Nick.

 

[doondoon]

Yeah I'm looking at Silverado's machines. I'm wondering how much faster there macs will render Red footage? If it is more on the software end then maybe not much. I'm not sure that having a 10,000 RPM drive would do all that much other than boot your system up really really fast.
Anyone have any experience with Silverado's machines?
thanks.