Advice for New System for CC

Harm Millaard · January 27th, 2014, 04:32 PM

I recently had a similar question about 'What kind of system to build'. Of course it starts with the available budget. That is usually the most limiting factor.

Without going into specifics, the intended workflow was such (lots of tracks with 4K material, lots of CC and effects, including Mocha, Twixtor, and the like) that the initial idea of a single i7-4930K or even an i7-4960X was quickly abandoned and attention turned to a dual E5-2695 v2 system. The doubt here was the multi-threading capabilities of the plug-ins. What is the use of dual 12 cores with HT, making a total of 48 logical cores if they are not used by the plug-ins?

Anyway, to cut a long story short, the system this person came up with is roughly what I would call 'The Editors Dream Machine':

Dual Xeon E5-2695 v2
64 GB DDR3-1866
Geforce GTX Titan 6 GB
Samsung Pro 256 GB SSD boot disk
Areca ARC 1882-iX/12 raid controller with 4 GB cache
8 x Samsung Pro 256 GB SSD in raid3 with one hot-spare.

Mind you, this person has a 20 TB NAS system, so he only needed limited on-line storage, hence only 1.5 TB on-line storage, but with room to grow. Total cost is around $ 11K according to PCPartPicker.

Now, without wanting to get into a PC-Mac war, I just looked over a potential 'Trashcan' MacPro configuration. The picture below shows what I have chosen and I have some serious doubts about that configuration. First of all, it is only a SINGLE CPU configuration, not a dual CPU. Secondly, it uses dual D700 FirePro cards, which do not yet measure up to a single GTX Titan for PR. Third, it uses a Thunderbolt 2.0 connection to the Promise R6 (6 by 2TB) which is limited to around 500 MB/s transfer rate. For comparison, the PC above achieves around 2500 MB/s with those SSD's. But even with these limitations, the price tag on the new MacPro is around $ 12.5K versus the much faster PC with a price tag of around $ 11K (with 48 logical cores instead of only 24, with double the L3 cache, with 5 times the transfer speed and faster video).

Not every video editing work-flow requires such a dream machine. For normal HD work a single CPU is enough and then clock speed, L3 cache and memory is more important than sheer number of logical cores, but when the resolution goes up, the number of pixels to be processed goes up tremendously. 4+K resolution really profits from more cores and more L3 cache, even with lower clock speed.

I'm sorry I can't give a generic answer to what you should do in your specific case, because it depends too much on your source material and your work-flow.

You mention your uncertainty about where you will be in 2017, 4+ K, 3D, ...
Well, Doris Day phrased it very well: "Que sera, sera. Whatever will be, will be. The future is not ours to see."

But we do know that nearly all modern, up-to-date computers, be they Mac or PC, will be outdated in three years time.

January 27th, 2014, 04:32 PM	#16
Harm Millaard Trustee Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Rotterdam, Netherlands Posts: 1,832	Re: Advice for New System for CC I recently had a similar question about 'What kind of system to build'. Of course it starts with the available budget. That is usually the most limiting factor. Without going into specifics, the intended workflow was such (lots of tracks with 4K material, lots of CC and effects, including Mocha, Twixtor, and the like) that the initial idea of a single i7-4930K or even an i7-4960X was quickly abandoned and attention turned to a dual E5-2695 v2 system. The doubt here was the multi-threading capabilities of the plug-ins. What is the use of dual 12 cores with HT, making a total of 48 logical cores if they are not used by the plug-ins? Anyway, to cut a long story short, the system this person came up with is roughly what I would call 'The Editors Dream Machine': Dual Xeon E5-2695 v2 64 GB DDR3-1866 Geforce GTX Titan 6 GB Samsung Pro 256 GB SSD boot disk Areca ARC 1882-iX/12 raid controller with 4 GB cache 8 x Samsung Pro 256 GB SSD in raid3 with one hot-spare. Mind you, this person has a 20 TB NAS system, so he only needed limited on-line storage, hence only 1.5 TB on-line storage, but with room to grow. Total cost is around $ 11K according to PCPartPicker. Now, without wanting to get into a PC-Mac war, I just looked over a potential 'Trashcan' MacPro configuration. The picture below shows what I have chosen and I have some serious doubts about that configuration. First of all, it is only a SINGLE CPU configuration, not a dual CPU. Secondly, it uses dual D700 FirePro cards, which do not yet measure up to a single GTX Titan for PR. Third, it uses a Thunderbolt 2.0 connection to the Promise R6 (6 by 2TB) which is limited to around 500 MB/s transfer rate. For comparison, the PC above achieves around 2500 MB/s with those SSD's. But even with these limitations, the price tag on the new MacPro is around $ 12.5K versus the much faster PC with a price tag of around $ 11K (with 48 logical cores instead of only 24, with double the L3 cache, with 5 times the transfer speed and faster video). Not every video editing work-flow requires such a dream machine. For normal HD work a single CPU is enough and then clock speed, L3 cache and memory is more important than sheer number of logical cores, but when the resolution goes up, the number of pixels to be processed goes up tremendously. 4+K resolution really profits from more cores and more L3 cache, even with lower clock speed. I'm sorry I can't give a generic answer to what you should do in your specific case, because it depends too much on your source material and your work-flow. You mention your uncertainty about where you will be in 2017, 4+ K, 3D, ... Well, Doris Day phrased it very well: "Que sera, sera. Whatever will be, will be. The future is not ours to see." YouTube (Short URL) But we do know that nearly all modern, up-to-date computers, be they Mac or PC, will be outdated in three years time. Attached Thumbnails Last edited by Harm Millaard; January 28th, 2014 at 04:06 AM.