Which configuration work with Red Rocket X

[Mikko HA]

Hi,
after reading many post I didn't found, or perhaps understood, which configuration work or not with Red Rocket X, to make RedCine, Final Cut or Adobe Premiere working at the highest level possible.

That what I understood is that to use the Red Rocket X with Mac we need to use an external Thunderbolt Box, like Sonnet Echo or Maxx Digital...
But this will not give us the full power of the Red Rocket because of PCI 16 "plug" and 4 bus from the Thunderbolt... blabla.... Is it correct ?

So, I'm looking for some clear "simple" explanation, or some clear "recent" configuration with who all this very expensive equipment is working.

For example, how is it with:
New Macbook Pro 15" (full option) + Red Rocket X + Thunderbolt box ?
or New Mac Pro 8 core + Red Rocket X + Thunderbolt box ?
or New Mac Pro 12 core + Red Rocket X + Thunderbolt box ?

Please could you share with us your configuration and how fast and how good is your configuration ?
Thank you very much.

 

[Mikko HA]

What about the new Macbook Pro 15" and the Magma 1T Thunderbolt 2 with the Red Rocket X ?

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Unfortunately I have yet to find any single slot PCIe to TB2 expansion chassis capable of hosting the full length RedRocket-X card. For a $1,000 US, or a bit more, there are several 3 slot options…

As noted, all currently deployed external PCIe chassis that use Thunderbolt I/O will bottleneck the RR-X to some degree on some operations. Would be fun to do a comparo of a RR-X on a X99 mobo with PCIe3 support vs the best TB2 chassis host on the market. What's the delta? Which operations are most compromised?

Support for RR-X acceleration beyond RED's own tools has been hit and miss so far in my world as FCPX, PremPro, etc continue to evolve - not to mention OS revisions, RR-X drivers/FW, RED's SDK, etc. So where's the OP's simple answer? IMO, there isn't one as of today.

Today - if you want to fully leverage the power of the RR-X, it's not on a Mac. I have mine in an old school MacPro tower in slot #2 and am living with multiple performance degrading issues like slow RAM, older CPUs, slow SATA bus on the internal drives, no TB option, limited GPU support, etc. Of the options noted:

1) 15" rMBP with TB2 host is limited by both too little RAM capacity and mobile GPU limitations - that said, people I know who roll like that are pretty happy campers - guess it depends on expectations

2) NeoMP cylinder with 8 or 12 cores - core count is more about which applications/operations you care about rather than RR-X support - same TB2 bottleneck

FWIW, I'm waiting for the second gen NeoMP cylinder in hopes of DDR4 RAM, PCIe3, more powerful GPUs, Broadwell, full HDMI 2 support, etc - throw in TB3 and I'm in love. Unfortunately, people in the know seem to think TB3 won't deploy until 2016… Maybe it's time for a PC and a part time IT/sysadmin person so I don't lose my mind (OK, that ship sailed… ;-)


Cheers - #19

 

[Mikko HA]

Thank you Blair, I think you well resume that what I've read in the forum but that I didn't understood correctly, now I think I get it !
I will try to test those configuration and make my decision, but I think the best is to be able to wait for the second gen NeoMP or otherwise, going back to PC world.
Thank you