Upgrade Mac Pro 5,1 and wait for new MBP or sell and go for Windows?

[Eirik Nicolai Heim]

Hi,

I work mainly as a cinematographer and colorist, but also do some editing
I have had different macs since 1999 and love the stability and how fluent I work in the OS.
Just recieved my Epic W and customers also desires more 4K deliveries.

I currently run a 5,1 late 2012 Mac Pro with 12 core 2,4, 40 GB of memory, Nvidia Geforce 680 with 4GB of memory and also installed a USB 3 card. I have an internat raid and have a 4K studio card from Black Magic and a reference monitor.
I edit in Premier Pro and grade in Davinci Resolve.

I also have a fully speced MBP from late 2013 for lighter work om the road. Has a Nvidia GPU and 16 GB memory.

I am considering two options. Upgrade the Mac Pro with a nvidia titan x and 128 GB of memory and wait for a new and better speced MBP. Or sell it all and buy a Windows Machine or two. I realy like Mac os and love my workflow, but need to Upgrade. Will I see a servere performance boost in davinci and premiere with the Upgrades mentioned? If I do, I would wait for new MBP and later on upgraded Mac Pro.

Or should I just lease the OS? If Adobe had made Cloud availble for linux and you did not have to by the control panel version of Davinci, then Linux would be a serious alternative.

Any experience regarding the same "problems"? Tips? Real life experience with maxed Mac pro 5,1?

 

[Jarek Zabczynski]

I was in the same situation. I upgraded my processors to dual 6 core 3.33ghz and got a GTX980ti. Massively improved my performance, especially in Resolve and in 4k. The only part that I don't care for is that now I need to use an external power supply for my graphics card. Without it I had power issues. With the right upgrades, it's still a very capable machine.

 

[Eirik Nicolai Heim]

I would love to keep going with my old trusted Mac Pro. Is it smarter to go with the GTX980ti than the Titan? You mean you need to use the extra cables following the card like I did with my 680 GPU or mod something else to get external power?

 

[Eric Bowen]

The x99 workstation with the 6950X 10 core offers the best performance for GPU acceleration applications especially Adobe and Davinci. Davinci scales across multiple GPU's which the X99 workstation is ideal for. I would suggest starting there.

 

[Ketch Rossi]

Been there, bought and tested PC units, could not stand it... When right back to MAC, now on a MBP 15" Touch Bar, and could not be happier... Well, actually I can and will as soon as Apple releases a new Desktop option...

At the end the top PC Laptop did not do any better then the top Touch Bar MBP... And with now both been able to make use of an external Box for either an NVDIA 1080, or PASCAL or Redrocket-X there is simply no reason to even think of going the PC route as there is really nothing there at all better then what it is offered by Apple, this is at list true right now on the Laptop front, the Desktop front will have to see 2017 refreshed lines in order to make proper call.

 

[Eirik Nicolai Heim]

Thank you Eric. I will look into your tip and try to look at some builds based on that.

How would it be to keep the MacBook Pro as the mobile option and get a windows machine for my office? Would paragon ntfs be fast enough to work with NTFS on all disks? Can you work as fast with both NTFS and HFS?

 

[Eric Bowen]

Yes Paragon NTFS or Mac Drive on the PC would be fine and common now. You can also transfer files over the network and not require either. Running OSX and Windows systems would not be an issue. The PC laptops also include desktop chip options on the Clevo line which far out perform any mobile chip laptop so yes there are better options for laptops as well than the MBP regardless of what the previous poster mentioned. The Clevo shells also offer multiple internal drive options besides TB3.

 

[Brendan H. Banks]

I built a machine intended as a Hackintosh and has served me well for the last year. Getting tired of waiting for OSX support for different things. I'm switching over to Windows as I found I don't really mind it. I happened into a free Samsung Windows 10 tablet PC after directing some spots for them and my opinion on windows has really changed. Not as pretty all around, but solid. Also, there are only a handful of apps I use regularly that are not cross-platform. Between my password keeper, chrome, and creative cloud, I notice almost zero difference except for some blockier UI. I also came from Windows in 2006 and still remember some basic utility usage so it's not that big a deal.

It's totally a preference thing. If you can get your hands on a Windows 10 device and use it for some basics for a little bit, that will be best. For me, things have come so far that it almost doesn't matter anymore. I completely understand and hear Ketch though. You gotta feel comfortable and good about what you're working with to be working at the level you need.

 

[Eirik Nicolai Heim]

Thank you all for your thoughts.

I kind of feel like Ketch Rossi, and really like to work with the Mac OS, and have been running mac only since 1999. I bet I could make windows work and all both creative cloud and davinci are cross plattform, and I guess all other software I use as well. But at the same time I guess I will miss mac OS big time and feel much slower doing my everyday tasks and also the workflows I am used too. And as Brendan_H_Banks says: "You gotta feel comfortable and good about what you're working with to be working at the level you need."

I guess my solution would be to trade my CPU for the 12 core 3,4 Xeon, Titan X Maxvell and 128 Gigs of memory. And get a USB 3.1 or 10GB ethernet for sharing stuff. That should be a nice workstation until Apple saves my day?

I do not think I will go for the new touch bar MacBook Pro yet. Does not really feel as an update even if I have the late 2013 MacBook Pro. I have 16GB og memory, Nvidia GPU, and not that much slower CPU.

Upgrade my Mac Pro and let it do the hard work, and record both Raw and Prores with my Epic W for on the road work with the MacBook Pro. I think that is the solution and hope that Apple turn things around in a year or at two at the latest.

 

[Jarek Zabczynski]

I would love to keep going with my old trusted Mac Pro. Is it smarter to go with the GTX980ti than the Titan? You mean you need to use the extra cables following the card like I did with my 680 GPU or mod something else to get external power?

The extra cables on the card need to go into a separate power supply that sits on top of my MacPro. I have my machine fully loaded with drives, cards and RAM so there's not enough power in the computer to run the 980ti properly. Some people say you can do it, but my machine kept shutting down until i got the extra power supply for the card.

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Resolve likes a lot of resources, so if that's your key app - you might want to follow Eric's notes about Windows on X99 with a couple of nVidia Pascal GPUs. I've stuck with my 12c 5,1 cMP tower, Maxwell GTX980 4GB VRAM GPU & RR-X - which has been happy without adding an aux power supply. Everyone I know that went Maxwell Titan or Ti on cMP have needed an aux PSU as Jarek notes. AFAIK, nVidia Pascal support on cMP is still MIA.

I'm getting by with the setup I have (similar to the OP but with the RR-X), that said, putting fresh money into the cMP in (practically) 2017 is pretty iffy unless you can make the investment back quickly. It would be a lot easier decision if we knew what to expect from Apple in 2017. If, as many believe, Apple has lost interest in the workstation market, then now is as good a time as any to bite the bullet and go Windows.

Cheers - #19

 

[Eirik Nicolai Heim]

Resolve is my key grading app yes, and I do more grading than editing. Editing is still OK within premiere lowering the debayer or using prores straight from the epic w as proxies or the entire pipeline.

I agree that it is kind of strange to use a lot of money on a computer from 2012 in 2017. I know that there is much power in the trash can mac, but I would still like a tower and the possibilities to upgrade more myself. And I am not sure that I like the AMD option for GPU when Resolve and Premiere are my key apps. Guess that Final Cut Pro X works fine now, but it will not be the NLE for me. Which leans me towards that windows is perfectly OK for work.

Do any of you have a suggestion how "high end" I should aim to future proof my self with a windows box. I see that you can even get xeon processor now with 44 cores. Not in my budget...

Maybe the solution is actually to keep my MacBook Pro for on the road and daily use, and go for a beefy windows box at the office for 4k online work. Then I have both OS options and if it works fine with NTFS/HFS mix I could live with that and upgrade later on to a MacBook Pro with 32 GB of ram and better specs than now.

Wonder how much I could get for my Mac Pro now..

 

[Eirik Nicolai Heim]

What about going for a highly speced HP Z840 and run linux? Use Davinci Resolve both for coloring and editing? And use Fusion as After Effects? (I seldom use after effects...) Would Linux/Davinci Resolve work well together with windows and Mac OS?

 

[Rich Rogers]

Hi all, I too from a user point of view was Apple up until about 6 months ago, From my trusty Quadra right up to my last 5,1 MP 12 core a few months back, fully kitted out with max ram, dual R9 280X (so effectively a pair of AMD D700) flash PCIe storage and a SATA 3.0 SSD Raid 5. It did scream don't get me wrong but the Apple ecosystem has been ever decreasing for so long now and a new laptop just wasn't going to cut it for me.

I have started a new company which launches in Jan basically bridging the gap from Pro Mac user to Pro windows user, I have tried to factor in as much 'Mac like' functionality as possible into our builds which are all HP Z series and Dell Precision workstations them customised by us for real Pro use but without the obscene prices usually associated with them direct from manufacturer (or components that you don't want).

I am not trying to give it the sell on here at all so please don't take this as a a pitch but this forum along with literally hundreds of others have all been up in arms with Apple ditching its Pro sector slowly but surely over the last 4 years.

We start in Jan 2017 and hope to help as many Mac to PC 'Switchers' as possible with friendly, professional one to one assistance in making the transition to a real, modern workstation again.

A laptop is for the road not for your suite.

Happy to answer any questions members on here may have who are daunted by the whole current murky situation with Apple/PC, Just trying to help so once again please don't see this as a sales pitch and flame me over this post.