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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 :)

Dragon + Mac Pro

roryhinds

roryhinds

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Anyone with a Dragon got a Mac Pro?

It would be interesting to know the transcoding times with a low spec Mac Pro as a Rocket-X alternative.
Would be cool if it works out as the Mac Pro would have multiply uses as a similar cost of a Rocket-X.
 
Marcos Montenegro said:
That link is for 4K not 6K dragon.
Click to expand...

And it isn't actually playing back 4k either.

I still think it's impressive and I've linked to the same test in other places. The main thing to take away is that you can drop your native clips in FCPX and just edit away. That will be the case with 6k dragon as well.

The key is that they have set playback quality to "better performance" as opposed to "better quality". The latter will force full resolution playback, whereas "better performance" lets FCPX scale the down the resolution actually being displayed in the Viewer. Just like RCP X can debayer at different levels.

This isn't to be frowned upon at all. Quite the opposite: it lets you work as intend with native clips and no fuss. No one will be anywhere NEAR 6k in the viewer window. Viewer fullscreen on 4k external display? Image quality to be determined… might still be good. Don't know if FCPX dynamically scales playback resolution based on Viewer size.

Anyway... just wanted to make sure that people don't think they are playing back 4k with 18 effect layers, full resolution, in real time.
 
I think if your going to be using Dragon footage you gotta buy the best, max out that Mac Pro, 12 cores or nothing.

Nils Ruinet said:
Very curious about this too ! Curious to hear which Mac Pro config would be recommended. 8 or 12 cores ? 32 or 64 GB RAM ? D700, obviously.
Click to expand...
 
Will Keir said:
I think if your going to be using Dragon footage you gotta buy the best, max out that Mac Pro, 12 cores or nothing.
Click to expand...

In sooo many situations 12 cores won't be best though. They're clocked lower at 2.7GHz and boosts up to 3.5GHz single threaded. The 8 core runs at 3.0GHz and boosts up to 3.9GHz.

Looking at performance vs price I think 8-core is the better choice apart from pure rendering machines that constantly loads all the cores.

As we've already seen, the 8-core flies through 4k native RED files if set correctly. Expect similar results with 6k files.
 
Exactly. For everything that runs within 8 cores / 16 threads or less, the 8-core option is 10% faster. Up to 13 % faster in low-thread situations with turbo. The 8-core has less L2 cache per core, but quite a bit more L3 cache per core. The cache on the 8-core is not divisive into separate partitions, which it becomes painfully slow if data needs to shift from the smaller upper-core cache to the lower cores cache.

Deciding which Mac Pro one should get is not an easy task. The 6 core should be a fine system, so should the 8. Even the 12 is a viable option if you have the right software to use it appropriately. For me, I decided on the 8-core, 64GB, 1TB, D700's. To me, this is the "maximum configuration". The 12-core is more niche and for the majority of tasks and users, it will actually perform slower than the 6 or 8 core systems.
 
utilisation of the cores is dependant on the software being written to take advantage of those cores.

Would be really interested to hear real world reports but I guess waiting for software to catch up is a factor here.
The Rocket-X is $6750
For $6799 you can get a Mac Pro with 8 Core + 32Gb Ram + 512Gb Storage + D700 Graphics.

If this config does what a Rocket-X can do then its a no brainer which tool is a better spend.
 
Slightly Related: MacPro 2009 & Dragon Footage inside RCX:
I've been playing back Dragon footage on my 2009 Mac Pro 2.26ghz dual 4 core, 32GB RAM. I also have a RED ROCKET card, but it's obsolete when Dragon footage is in RCX viewer or timeline....gives a warning that it cannot be used. BUT, with latest BETA 22 build i'm getting 1/4 playback with no issues and 1/2 playback only slightly slower than realtime....I'm pretty impressed with what has been done with software by RED. BUT, would sure like my Rocket to work.....

I'm just now (one day in) working with FCPx new update: 10.1 & compressor 4.1 and very impressed at the speeds i'm seeing on my 2009 MacPro...woW! and now updating the guts of my MacPro for new dual 6 core and new 1333 ram and SSD to make my 4.1 to 5.1 with 48GB RAM in pairs of three as suggested by Jeff Kilgore....that should then give another boost. At moment i'm happy NOT upgrading to the new MacPro since i also have a pile of PCIe devices i would have to figure out how to deal with on the new macpro. So this upgrade in hardware saves me that headache and $$
 
Yeah it would be interesting to see what the $2999 lowest entry level Mac Pro performs like.
For the money you could purchase 2 Mac Pros for the cost of 1 Rocket X card.

Anyone remember the ICE cards for After Effects :-)
 
my guess is with this config, I can tell you how I know this soon:

MacPro
8 core 3.0ghz Xeon E5
64gb RAM 1867Mhz DDR3
1TB SSD HD
Dual 6GB AMD Fire Pro D700

rendering TO and FROM the desktop, which is the fastest SSD avail commercially I've been told, and results were same going out to Tbolt1 HD

Dragon 6K is about 8fps rendering out of newest RC-X GPU Build. Now RC-X isn't ideally optimized for these specific OpenCL cards from what I understand so it can only get better.

This is just preliminary info and I hopefully can provide more in depth info very soon.
 
The quad core will probably be in the 12-15 fps range, six-core in the 15-18 fps range, and the 8-core will probably be in the 20-24 fps range, but that's just a guess bases on current equivalent systems.
 
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