Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • 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

Phil Holland said:
Yes.
Click to expand...

Phil, which PC? If I can really get a PC with the same performance and with slots for half the cost, then switching is a no-brainier. I just can't figure out what PC will do that for me. The high-performance PCs seem to be about the same price.
 
Wow, i didn't know that. always thinking more money is more performance. thanks for the clarification guys. hope this helps perspective Mac Pro buyers.

Jeff Kilgroe said:
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.
Click to expand...
 
D Fuller said:
Yup. I still have one around here somewhere. And a Cosa dongle too. There's $7 grand in 1994 dollars that are museum pieces now.
Click to expand...


Wow thats bringing back memories :)

Add an EIAS dongle and you can easily buy a Datsun ;)
 
The Mac Pro is only going to get better when more software is optimized to take advantage of it. Our shop has a bunch of older Mac Pros and we were debating going PC next round, but when it comes down to it, we spend 8-10 hours a day working on these things, and do we really want to use Windows when we enjoy Mac OS much better? Sure a maxxed out PC might eek out a few extra fps but the new Mac Pro looks to be no slouch, and I know I'll enjoy and be comfortable staying on MacOS.

Also, Jarred's Dec Dragon thread has a lot of good info on Rocket-X and PC vs Mac Pro thoughts, and the Rocket-X sounds to be so powerful that even running in a Thunderbolt 2 chassis you're going to get a big boost in speed if you want the ultimate setup.
 
i thought for sure that i would get on elf the new mac pros but now...looking at the first tests, i mean yes of course the 8 core system is fast....but everything i see with fcpx...not sure i see a difference between that and my 2013 top imac....if you are working on non 4k monitors i really don't think the "better quality" vs "better performance" will be a big difference....
and even the 8core (or 12 core) systems won't run 6k 70fps at full....for that kind of performance one needs a rocketX anyway and that in turn is likely to bring THAT kind of performance (or the best possible over TB2) to any mac with TB2....
of course an ideal set up would be both but since i don't need fast render times i just don't see that being a necessity....
the only real problem i have now is that apple really laid an egg with putting out the 2013 imac without TB2....i guess they knew what they were doing....
btw: the base new mac pro system gets beaten by the top imac in benchmarks....
 
I seen pc places doing Dual Xeon, same Xeon E5 Chip also. So I am debating.. Just boot drives are SSD not flash storage and no thunderbolt. Saw 12 core system around 5K with a Quadro NVIDIA card. You can do a search for digitalstormonline they have a few flavors.. Not sure if they have a 6core but that go 12, 24, and 32.

Thing is i have PCI FIbre cards connected to old Apple 14 bay RAID. So if I get the new Mac I have to add on at least another $1000 for a 2 slot magma expansion case so for that reason i might as well go the pc route. For dual gpus you can just add another card in you can use those GTX 780 cards as they have the CUDA cores and run them in dual mode. Premiere sees Merc Playback Engine with it.

Someone said something about the RCX using GPU's now.
 
Teamwork

Teamwork

I have never seen a major revamp that didn't require a few weeks, often months, before all the parts started working smoothly together. I know everybody (including me ;-) is in a lather right now about the new MacPros, but I really don't expect solid benchmarks on the new platform for at least a couple of months. Complex systems typically perform only as well as the weakest link - which is often more about integration between components than the theoretical capabilities of individual parts. I anticipate a lot of driver revisions in the next 60 days.

Cheers - #19
 
Out of curiosity I loaded OffHollywoods Dragon clips into my 6-core Mac Pro to see what kind of real time performance I would get. Project is native Dragon-files at the resolution that Mark provided.

Any banding in the video is from screen capture and compression. In FCPX everything renders perfectly.

 
I know PC's will be faster and better suited to heavy work compared to the new Mac Pro.

My original post was a search to see if the Mac Pro could be an alternative to a Rocket-X, to do Dragon transcodes as its a small form factor that can be easily transported, plugged in and run on location. If you set up screen sharing you could have it so you don't even need a separate monitor and can connect to the "can" via Apple's remote desktop to set up transcodes and keep your footprint low.
 
roryhinds said:
I know PC's will be faster and better suited to heavy work compared to the new Mac Pro.
Click to expand...

No, you don't. And neither does anyone else because nobody has used it for that type of work yet. Not to mention that there are different configurations of the new Mac just as there are different configurations of PC's. This statement is misleading and rather simplistic, considering that there is no such thing as one PC or one Mac Pro. Not to mention that specs do not tell the story when so much of what enables performance in our kind of work is tied up in design, underlying bus structure, interconnects, subsystems, OS tuning, application tuning, and many, many other factors. Time, testing, and experience will ultimately reveal the facts regarding specific performance of these different systems on specific formats of files and specific applications. There is no point to drawing any conclusions without those facts.
 
roryhinds said:
My original post was a search to see if the Mac Pro could be an alternative to a Rocket-X
Click to expand...

This is a question that doesn't have an answer that works for everybody in reality because of one major flaw.

Basic answer.

Is the new Mac Pro faster than previous Mac Pros? Yep.

Is it going to transcode faster or on par than a system equipped with a Red Rocket-X? Nope.


However, I'll play devil's advocate. Depending on your specific workflow and needs it might be all you desire or want. It also might not.
 
You can build a PC with 2 x CPU's and your choice of nVidia cards, with PCIe connections for storage and the like. I'd say its safe to say as these Mac Pro's are only single CPU and no nVidia that a custom build PC would be faster and better.
 
Phil Holland said:
This is a question that doesn't have an answer that works for everybody in reality because of one major flaw.

Basic answer.

Is the new Mac Pro faster than previous Mac Pros? Yep.

Is it going to transcode faster or on par than a system equipped with a Red Rocket-X? Nope.


However, I'll play devil's advocate. Depending on your specific workflow and needs it might be all you desire or want. It also might not.
Click to expand...
the real problem is that there is no way to utilize the full rocketX speed on any new/existing mac system....external box over TB is the only choice which means at best we are only getting a fraction of what the rocketX can do....
jarred mentioned that the rocketX is at about 30% right now (in beta? alpha?) and realistically that might be all that can be expected over TB anyway...
i would like to know what a rocketX in box (A,B or C) via TB 2 (or 1, but that is less important) can do....
i guess a maxed out mac pro with rocketX should solve met problems? but again: realistically how many frames (or how many more) does one get for an extra 7500$ (rocketX+box)...
 
Yeah I think if you're going the Rocket-X route then you will have to go with a machine with PCI to get the full advantage of investing in a Rocket.
TB2 is a lot slower than PCIe. Having a Rocket-X with a new Mac Pro would be a very restricted way of working with the card.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top