New MacPro....processor speed

[Benjamin Eckstein]

I am getting one of the new 8 core mac pros. This will be a big jump from editing on my MacBook Pro 2.16 Intel Duo Core.

I have 2 thoughts, one is get the fastest processor available at the time, because it will all get surpassed soon but you might as well get what is fastest at the time.

Another school of thought is that it is all going to be surpassed so save a little money and don't get the fastest.

I edit XDCAM/HDV/DV footage usually in their native formats, but will probably use ProRes formats too. Do you think the speed difference between the 2.8GHZ and 3.2 GHZ processors will have a marked difference. Its a 1600 dollar price difference.....which would cover the cost of whatever HD card I plan to get.

Thanks.

B

[Nate Weaver]

Originally Posted by Benjamin Eckstein

Do you think the speed difference between the 2.8GHZ and 3.2 GHZ processors will have a marked difference. Its a 1600 dollar price difference.....which would cover the cost of whatever HD card I plan to get.

As an owner of a quad 2.66, I would say no. I will tell you what makes a big difference though in speed of editing HDV/XDCAM is though....

...drive speed. I swear it does not make any sense whatsoever, given that the datarate for HDV is 10 times slower than any given firewire800 drive, but it's true. HDV media on my 8 drive external RAID is much faster to work with than the same media on my 320gb G-Tech FW800 2-drive RAID. I wish I could demonstrate it to you, it's so much faster.

So anyway, I'd skip the processor upgrade, and get a 4 or 5 drive RAID, if you're concerned about speed.

[Martin Pauly]

Apart from fast drives, more RAM is another good way to spend the money that you save from sticking to the 2.8GHz model. That's what I'll do (both drives and memory).

- Martin