Leaving MacPro for THIS PC Workstation Configuration. Thoughts?

[Bill Jacobs]

[I originally asked an earlier version of this as a reply on a previous post questioning if a MacPro 12-core could handle the post flow. Since that is no longer the issue and we've fine-tuned our anticipated PC workstation purchase, and I'm hoping posting our revised inquiry here as a new post is acceptable...]

We will be editing a LENGTHY feature film (divided up into reels for editing purposes) shot in 5K RED (with a handful of Dragon 6K shots) – finishing in 4K. And since our current MacPro 12-core is not giving us the power and fluidity of image we need to edit the RED 5K in Premiere on a 4K timeline (not wanting to use proxies), we have decided to purchase a PC platform edit workstation to do the job. Below is what we are considering (with a few questions thrown in). If anyone has any suggestions or input on the following, I’d be greatly appreciative and open to hearing your thoughts (and even a qualified “Yep! That should do it!” would be nice…).


COMPUTER: HP Z840 WORKSTATION - SPECS


PROCESSORS: Intel Xeon 18 Core V PRO (but would a dual 10-Core be more advantageous?)


RAM MEMORY: 256GB (Using 32G Sticks so we can upgrade to 512G later, if needed)


INTERNAL STORAGE: HPZ - Turbo Drive 512GB (Solid State)


GRAPHICS CARDS: NVIDIA QUADRO M6000 … I believe that we need to go with TWO of these, considering the many EFX shots to be created and rendered. In doing so, I also realize the need to have an “SLI Bridge” installed between the cards so that they will work together to full capacity in programs such as Premiere.


CONNECTIONS STANDARD: Eight(8) USB 3.0 (4 front/4 back), Two(2) USB 2.0, Two(2) RJ -45 Gig LAN/Ethernet, One(1) key board jack, One(1) mouse jack.


CONNECTIONS TO ADD: HP Thunderbolt 2 - Two(2) port Ai0 Module (Product # E5Z73AA)


CONTROL BOARDS: We are considering the Euphonix/Avid Artist Control as an editing controller, and the Euphonix/Avid Artist Color Control for color correction in DaVinci Resolve 12


RAIDS: This is s bit of a complex issue – considering all of our original R3D files are on THREE Pegasus II RAIDS, formatted for Mac, and set up as RAID 10 – so, I’ll cover this section as a separate post…


Thanks, everyone! Much appreciated!

 

[Adrien oneiga]

nice. how much is that PC gonna run?

 

[Zack Birlew]

Bill, if funds allow it, the dual 10 would be more advantageous for performance. Dual 18 would be the top right now and would be amazing if your budget allows and if that were an option for the workstations you're looking at. With a workstation like that, you'll be set for years and years!

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

[I originally asked an earlier version of this as a reply on a previous post questioning if a MacPro 12-core could handle the post flow. Since that is no longer the issue and we've fine-tuned our anticipated PC workstation purchase, and I'm hoping posting our revised inquiry here as a new post is acceptable...]

We will be editing a LENGTHY feature film (divided up into reels for editing purposes) shot in 5K RED (with a handful of Dragon 6K shots) – finishing in 4K. And since our current MacPro 12-core is not giving us the power and fluidity of image we need to edit the RED 5K in Premiere on a 4K timeline (not wanting to use proxies), we have decided to purchase a PC platform edit workstation to do the job. Below is what we are considering (with a few questions thrown in). If anyone has any suggestions or input on the following, I’d be greatly appreciative and open to hearing your thoughts (and even a qualified “Yep! That should do it!” would be nice…).


COMPUTER: HP Z840 WORKSTATION - SPECS


PROCESSORS: Intel Xeon 18 Core V PRO (but would a dual 10-Core be more advantageous?)

With only one Xeon CPU installed in the Z820, you won't be able to use all of the PCIe slots in the system properly. You must have two CPUs installed if you want to access all slots and lanes. Dual 10-core would indeed be advantageous as you would gain two additional cores and all cores would be running at higher speeds. Not to mention those PCIe lanes I mentioned above.

RAM MEMORY: 256GB (Using 32G Sticks so we can upgrade to 512G later, if needed)

Price it out a few different ways. 256GB is probably going to be plenty for a while, especially if you're using Resolve and Premiere. The cost of 32GB sticks is quite a bit more and if you don't plan to upgrade to 512 in the relatively near future, you may do better to just go 16x16GB.

INTERNAL STORAGE: HPZ - Turbo Drive 512GB (Solid State)

IMO, you should save your money and go with a Samsung 850 Pro... But that's just me...

GRAPHICS CARDS: NVIDIA QUADRO M6000 … I believe that we need to go with TWO of these, considering the many EFX shots to be created and rendered. In doing so, I also realize the need to have an “SLI Bridge” installed between the cards so that they will work together to full capacity in programs such as Premiere.

SLI Bridges are for combining video outputs into one on your primary GPU card. You don't need it and Premiere, Resolve, etc.. other pro apps, don't use it. It's a gaming thing. One thing to be aware of here is that installing multiple GPUs into a Z8x0 workstation is tricky. The slot layout isn't always ideal and the power supply is a bit on the weak side. Not sure what the latest GPU offerings are from HP, but I think I've bought all my Z820 and Z840 systems sans GPUs and have installed GPUs myself. Most of the systems are currently running Titan or Titan X GPUs as they are computationally equivalent, even superior at times due to clock speeds, compared to the Quadro and Tesla cards. And a whole lot cheaper. I still run Quadros in systems that do a lot of OpenGL work or use specific apps that really benefit from the Quadro instruction set over the GeForce cards -- SolidWorks, Pro/E, etc..

The dual-port Thunderbolt 2 card is still based on a single 20Gbps Thunderbolt header sitting atop a PCIe v2 X4 interface. The second port is shared, not discreet. So while it's nice to have that second port for convenience, you can't connect two Thunderbolt 2 devices to each port and get full bandwidth on each at the same time.

Not sure on the control boards. So much is personal preference. I like the Tangent Element boards, but think they could have done a better design with their connectivity design. Use wise, the MC Color is nice for a small board, but limited. Love the DaVinci Resolve control surface, but it's super expensive and very difficult to justify.

 

[Dunkan Wolf]

Dual Xeon 10 core + one Nvidia Titan Black renders 5k real time at all compression settings. and 6K up to compression 8:1

 

[Gunleik Groven]

Dual Xeon 10 core + one Nvidia Titan Black renders 5k real time at all compression settings. and 6K up to compression 8:1

I have allways found it interesting that realtime gets better at higher compression. but that's a sidenote.

 

[NOSA OBAYIUWANA]

What is the cost.... what are you planning to spend on this?

 

[Bill Jacobs]

[/FONT]
SLI Bridges are for combining video outputs into one on your primary GPU card. You don't need it and Premiere, Resolve, etc.. other pro apps, don't use it. It's a gaming thing.

Thanks for all of the input.

I gotta admit, the graphics card aspect still has me scratching my head a bit: I had heard that Premiere didn't make use of two graphics cards without the bridge (though Resolve does), and I even called Adobe and NVIDA techs directly to confirm that the bridge was needed.

We're trying to get the best possible processing and real time monitoring during post – whether it be editing in Premiere, doing FX in AE, or finishing in Resolve. So, you think a Titan X card (or two?) would benefit us better than the NVIDIA QUADRO M6000? Does using TWO CARDS even truly help?

Thanks!

 

[Bill Jacobs]

More RAM – or more CORES?


For our HP Z840 Microsoft Windows Workstation, we’re going to start with ONE (1) NVIDIA Quadro M6000 graphics card, and only add another if we find it’s needed.


But beyond that, since the price is basically the same for EITHER of the two systems configured below, would you go with more RAM – or more CORES? Which of the below will give us more bang for our buck in 5K Premiere, AE, and Resolve?:


DUAL - Intel® Xeon E5-2699v3 2.3 2133 18-Core w/256GB RAM – 1CPU Load Reduced Registered RAM


DUAL - Intel® Xeon E5-2687Wv3 3.1 2133 10-Core w/512GB – 2CPU Load Reduced Registered RAM




Thanks!

 

[Zack Birlew]

I've already said it but with those specs I'd go with more cores because ram will always get cheaper and 256gb for video, even 4K, is more than enough.

 

[Bill Jacobs]

Thanks, Zack. That's what we were thinking...

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Thanks for all of the input.

I gotta admit, the graphics card aspect still has me scratching my head a bit: I had heard that Premiere didn't make use of two graphics cards without the bridge (though Resolve does), and I even called Adobe and NVIDA techs directly to confirm that the bridge was needed.

This is always infuriating -- many of the support techs, even at nVidia, don't know what the SLI bridges truly do. They have nothing to do with compute operations or using multiple GPUs for CUDA, OpenCL or OpenGL. They are used for combining image segments into a single output feed. So if you have two GPUs in a system and run an app (typically a game) that supports SLI (yes, the app has to specifically support it), it can render the top half of your frames on one card and the bottom half on the other card or evens on one, odds on the other, etc.. And then the images are pushed along the SLI chain to the primary video card and combined for output to the monitor.

You almost never see SLI bridges installed in workstation systems, although most Quadro models do have the ability to support SLI. Tesla cards don't have SLI connections as they are intended for compute acceleration only. When using cards for compute -- as in CUDA or OpenCL -- the applications have to specifically support multiple GPUs for those compute operations in order to use them. Premiere only uses a single GPU for playback in the Mercury engine, R3D decode and other playback operations. However, Premiere in its current incarnation will use multiple GPUs for rendering operations. Resolve uses multiple GPUs and does a great job of it. But stacking several GPUs into a system does not guaranty further acceleration. There is a balance needed to properly feed your GPUs with ample CPU power and memory capacity and throughput.

The Titan X card is essentially the consumer version of the Quadro M6000. The Quadros do have a habit of running smoother or more consistently a lot of the time. They often feel more controlled is the best way to put it. Also, unlike the original Titan GPU, the new Titan X does not have full FP64 or dual-precision acceleration that you will find on the Quadro cards. So depending on your applications this may or may not be an issue. This is not an issue for Premiere or Resolve, but can be an issue for many 3D rendering, visualization or CAD applications. In this situation, if the budget is there, I would go with the M6000. The Titan X is great and a lot cheaper, it does have a few advantages with clock speed in addition to the much lower price tag, but in the end, the Quadro is more functional and *should* be more robust over time. That latter point on robustness is not always the case and many of us use GeForce series cards to great effect in production workstations. I have systems here with both GeForce cards and Quadro cards.

Dual GPUs in a Z840 can still be tricky at times depending on your other hardware. And forget about using three.

Be aware than in Premiere and After Effects, it doesn't matter if you choose the M6000 or the Titan X, you'll have to modify the config files to enable the cards as they're not officially supported. Typical Adobe lameness.