Quad or 8 core Mac Pro?

Niels Neeskens · June 19th, 2009, 10:11 AM

Well, I am still waiting for my 8 Gig Ram from a 3rd party, I would probably have ordered it from Apple even though it's more expensive. I am waiting for a month now and got a tracking number for UPS which doesn't work!

Otherwise, I am very happy with the machine. At one point I couldn't log in, because of a major error in the update of the software (don't update with filevault running!!!). I am not so happy with Apple in general lately, because next to that I had my Macbook Pro for repair and I got it back more broken then ever. It had a big dent and couldn't close anymore.

But the machine is great and makes working with video editing so much nicer and faster. I never regretted it for a second.

Cheers

Erick Munari · June 19th, 2009, 12:13 PM

Thanks for the reply Niels.
Would you be willing to tell us who is your RAM dealer so we know not to order from them.
I have a MAcBookPro/FCP2 configuration as well, rendering, compression and encoding time are a bummer and it sounds like the laptop could just blow up sometimes from so much strain, thus the apparent need for the MacPro. How is it for instance, what it takes me about 5hrs of compression from ProRes to Mpeg2 on the laptop, what would say it takes on your MP?
Sorry to hear Apple has been so lame, it seems that the bigger the company the lesser the service.
Take care.

Niels Neeskens · June 20th, 2009, 05:30 AM

Hey Erick,

I wanna wait a little longer before I put them on the black list. I've send them an email and hope for a responds that will get me further with the whole deal. If I don't hear from them and don't have the RAM next week, I'll let you guys know.

My MacBook Pro (they hurt my baby :( is one of the first generations and as you described compression is a bummer. I would say it's at least 10 times as fast, so saving a lot of time. I can only imagine it will be even more with Snow Leopard. The bigger thing for me is the rendering. I hate it when I am working on a project and it takes long for rendering the effects in it. It takes me out of my workflow.

If this sounds familiar to you, I wouldn't hesitate for a second and buy the new machine.

Cheers

Nigel Barker · June 20th, 2009, 10:52 AM

I always order RAM direct from Crucial. They guarantee it to work on your particular machine & deliver very quickly to me here in France shipping from the UK. Their prices are among the cheapest. When I bought my Mac Pro (2008 model) I ordered the RAM from Crucial on the same day as the system from Apple & the memory arrived before the workstation. When I opened up the Mac to upgrade the memory I found that the factory installed RAM was Crucial too. It didn't even have a special Apple sticker to double the price.

Of course if you may have ordered from Crucial as I seem to recall that they ship by UPS. In which case chase them up as they are normally exceptionally good. Maybe the problem is with UPS?

Niels Neeskens · June 20th, 2009, 01:07 PM

Hey Nigel,

No it's not Crucial, well I guess it's not so bad to say the name. The company I've ordered from is transintl.com. I ordered the 8GB Kit (4x2GB) DDR3 1066MHz (PC8500) ECC SDRAM: for $142.00

Maybe it is UPS, I've send them an email, but no responds yet. I'll give them a call monday about what's going on.

I've checked the Crucial site and did the system check. It recognized the MacPro as a Mac Pro (4-core Xeon 3500 Series) 3rd Gen, but it is a 8-core 2,66 Ghz. Don't know how that happened. They are more expensive, but maybe I'll go to them next time.

Andy Wilkinson · June 20th, 2009, 03:24 PM

In response to the question from Erick along the lines of , "anything I'd wished I'd done" regarding the purchase spec of my Mac Pro, well, no not really. It's really quiet with the 4870 card (nothing I've heard so far has been louder than a very low level background purr), and it's super fast at rendering - makes my MBP seem painfully slow at that. Everything just works and works very well (I'm on very latest software updates etc. and did a completely fresh install of FCS2 etc.).

Works really nicely with my two Dell 2408WFP monitors, one via DVI, one via the Apple DVI/mini display port adapter.

I'm definitely pleased I went this route and not the super glossy and more expensive yet limited connectivity Apple Cinema Display route...and all the issues around connecting two of those to a 2009 Mac Pro that seems to get posted on the Apple forums. As I understand it, you can't connect 2 of the new ACD's at the moment (as the adapter that would be needed by the second one does not yet exist). It's really great to have all the space that two 24 inch displays give you to edit away on and weird that Apple Fan Boys can't do this by buying two new ACDs for their 2009 Mac Pros!

It really depends on what you are thinking of doing with a Mac Pro as to the spec you need. But don't forget, it's so easy to upgrade practically anything (except the processor speed or number of cores) anyway so you could always build it up to your desired spec over time if needed.

I'm currently working on an approx. 12 minute corporate video project (1080p 25fps XDCAM EX3 clips, not in ProRes format but full uncompressed...just the way I like to do things, for now) and I've about 12 audio tracks and about 7 video tracks and it's well fast enough for what I want whilst editing. Sure, if you scroll around fast in the FCP timeline it can take a few seconds (2-3) for all the thumbnails and audio peaks to refresh on screen, as I would expect, as the drives (again super quiet) are all "just" 1TB WD Blacks (7,200rpm), not Velociraptors or super-fast SAS.

I'm just using a software Raid 0 on the 3rd and 4th drives and occasionally a external 2TB GRAID-3 that I'm also using, connected by mere FW800 to this Mac Pro (or my MBP). I did not like the sound (from reading around) of the Apple Raid card so held onto my money for a future external multi-disc RAID 0 enclosure linked via an eSATA card, should I ever really need it. Many recommendations on this forum and elsewhere as to which ones work best. Right now, that's a luxury I don't need nor can really afford.

One other comment, I ditched the wired 1 button Apple Mighty Mouse almost immediately and use a pretty typical (i.e normal Microsoft 2 button wireless mouse) as I personally find this much quicker to use. I'm really not the type that has to have the Apple name on everything in my editing bay, it's what works best regarding functionality that counts for me.

So far, this Mac Pro looks like a great machine and very pleased I took the cost hit of it's purchase for my business! Without doubt, it's a stunning computer (albeit one with an unbelievably noisy superdrive as is well documented...why o why have they still not sorted that out!).

Niels Neeskens · June 25th, 2009, 03:49 AM

Hey Andy,

Maybe you know the answer to this problem. So as you know I've the Mac Pro 8-core 2,66 Ghz. In QMaster I've made this setup:
- Quickcluster with services
- Enabled the share and manage for compressor
- Options for selected services is 4 Instances
- Quickcluster name is Niels's Virtual Cluster

But if I use Compressor and select the virtual cluster to use every core it doesn't work. What am I doing wrong here?

Cheers

Niels Neeskens · June 25th, 2009, 04:17 AM

I knew the answer all ready, but somehow I didn't do it the right way. I've send the project directly to compressor, but I had to make a Quicktime Movie of it and then export it into Compressor :)

Niels Neeskens · June 25th, 2009, 04:41 AM

I knew the answer all ready, but somehow I didn't do it the right way. I've send the project directly to compressor, but I had to make a Quicktime Movie of it and then export it into Compressor :)

Niels Neeskens · June 25th, 2009, 05:08 AM

I knew the answer all ready, but somehow I didn't do it the right way. I've send the project directly to compressor, but I had to make a Quicktime Movie of it and then export it into Compressor :)

Erick Munari · June 25th, 2009, 02:17 PM

Thank you Andy and Neils,
now another question:
Have you heard of and if so about the Nividia 285? I have read different opinions as for how it compares with its competitor the ATA Radeon HD480. My purchase, for economical reasons will be the 8core 2.26, usingnFCP2/HDV to ProRes/Compressor to M2v/DVD Studio 2 workflow, videos of 1 to 2hr avarage.
Glad to hear about the non-Apple monitors Andy, and congratulations on your site as well.
Erick

Peter Dunphy · June 29th, 2009, 09:28 AM

Hi guys,

Having read the info in the below link I'm a bit confused. For the Apple Mac Pro 2 x 2.66Ghz Nehalem (8 Core) is the optimum RAM level 12GB Ram (6 x 2GB)? It looks that way - at least the processing times appear shorter for 12GB than for 16GB :o/

Am on the verge of buying a Apple Mac Pro 2 x 2.66Ghz Nehalem (8 Core) and just want to be sure I have the ideal amount of RAM installed to ensure that Final Cut Studio, and in particular, Motion 3, run like a dream.

Surely the best bet would be to install 16-32GB of RAM?

Here is the link (previously kindly posted in this thread by Andy):

Pro Apps on Nehalem Mac Pro - Cores? Memory?

All suggestions really appreciated.

Peter

Niels Neeskens · June 29th, 2009, 09:50 AM

Erick, I haven't heard about the Nividia 285, so I can't help you with that.

Peter, the max RAM is 32GB for the 8-core and 12 (or 16) for the quad-core. Only thing is that the 4 GB is still very expensive, so a total of 16 (8x2) is max. for me at the moment.

Erick Munari · June 29th, 2009, 09:53 AM

Thanks anyway Neils,
so far, the video card 285 looks promissing, but no test drives from real people I have heard of yet.

Peter Dunphy · July 1st, 2009, 01:15 PM

Hi Guys

Am close to pulling the trigger, but am trying to finalise my Raid / backup. Any suggestions on my below setup would be really appreciated:

- Mac Pro 8 Core 2.66GHZ 6GB 1TB Radeon HD 4870 512MB

- 12 GB RAM

- 1 * WD caviar green 1TB SATAII 3.5" 32MB cache internal hard drive (Just one additional internal drive to backup the system boot drive with Time Machine - is this sensible?)

- As regards an affordable Raid 5 solution I've been quoted the below item from a supplier. However, my amateur Raid research has led me to believe that software Raid's (consume CPU) aren't as good as hardware Raids. For the below item, will I also need to purchase the "G-Technology PCI express RAID controller" to complement it?

Here's the quote from the supplier in response to me requesting an affordable Raid 5 solution:

"Just keep the one disk in the mac pro ( or maybe 2, so you can have a backup of your system)

Forget the raid card and internal disks - use one of these instead - G-Technology G-SPEED eS 4TB eSATA External Hard Drive

Its external, so if your mac breaks then you can still get to your storage. You can also transfer it to use on a different machine. Its fast enough to cope with 3 streams of video at prores format. Costs about the same as the mac pro with internal raid and disks"

- If this Raid 5 setup looks okay, and actually can perform a Raid 5 setup, would I be able to expand to include additional hard drives in the Raid if I needed more space in a year or two?

Any suggestions whatsoever would be really appreciated. Thanks Andy and Niels for your valuable feedback.

June 20th, 2009, 03:24 PM	#36
Andy Wilkinson Inner Circle Join Date: Sep 2007 Location: Cambridge UK Posts: 2,853	In response to the question from Erick along the lines of , "anything I'd wished I'd done" regarding the purchase spec of my Mac Pro, well, no not really. It's really quiet with the 4870 card (nothing I've heard so far has been louder than a very low level background purr), and it's super fast at rendering - makes my MBP seem painfully slow at that. Everything just works and works very well (I'm on very latest software updates etc. and did a completely fresh install of FCS2 etc.). Works really nicely with my two Dell 2408WFP monitors, one via DVI, one via the Apple DVI/mini display port adapter. I'm definitely pleased I went this route and not the super glossy and more expensive yet limited connectivity Apple Cinema Display route...and all the issues around connecting two of those to a 2009 Mac Pro that seems to get posted on the Apple forums. As I understand it, you can't connect 2 of the new ACD's at the moment (as the adapter that would be needed by the second one does not yet exist). It's really great to have all the space that two 24 inch displays give you to edit away on and weird that Apple Fan Boys can't do this by buying two new ACDs for their 2009 Mac Pros! It really depends on what you are thinking of doing with a Mac Pro as to the spec you need. But don't forget, it's so easy to upgrade practically anything (except the processor speed or number of cores) anyway so you could always build it up to your desired spec over time if needed. I'm currently working on an approx. 12 minute corporate video project (1080p 25fps XDCAM EX3 clips, not in ProRes format but full uncompressed...just the way I like to do things, for now) and I've about 12 audio tracks and about 7 video tracks and it's well fast enough for what I want whilst editing. Sure, if you scroll around fast in the FCP timeline it can take a few seconds (2-3) for all the thumbnails and audio peaks to refresh on screen, as I would expect, as the drives (again super quiet) are all "just" 1TB WD Blacks (7,200rpm), not Velociraptors or super-fast SAS. I'm just using a software Raid 0 on the 3rd and 4th drives and occasionally a external 2TB GRAID-3 that I'm also using, connected by mere FW800 to this Mac Pro (or my MBP). I did not like the sound (from reading around) of the Apple Raid card so held onto my money for a future external multi-disc RAID 0 enclosure linked via an eSATA card, should I ever really need it. Many recommendations on this forum and elsewhere as to which ones work best. Right now, that's a luxury I don't need nor can really afford. One other comment, I ditched the wired 1 button Apple Mighty Mouse almost immediately and use a pretty typical (i.e normal Microsoft 2 button wireless mouse) as I personally find this much quicker to use. I'm really not the type that has to have the Apple name on everything in my editing bay, it's what works best regarding functionality that counts for me. So far, this Mac Pro looks like a great machine and very pleased I took the cost hit of it's purchase for my business! Without doubt, it's a stunning computer (albeit one with an unbelievably noisy superdrive as is well documented...why o why have they still not sorted that out!). __________________ Andy K Wilkinson - https://www.shootingimage.co.uk Cambridge (UK) Corporate Video Production Last edited by Andy Wilkinson; June 20th, 2009 at 04:09 PM. Reason: typos

June 29th, 2009, 09:28 AM	#42
Peter Dunphy Major Player Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: Belfast Northern Ireland Posts: 261	12GB ideal RAM? Hi guys, Having read the info in the below link I'm a bit confused. For the Apple Mac Pro 2 x 2.66Ghz Nehalem (8 Core) is the optimum RAM level 12GB Ram (6 x 2GB)? It looks that way - at least the processing times appear shorter for 12GB than for 16GB :o/ Am on the verge of buying a Apple Mac Pro 2 x 2.66Ghz Nehalem (8 Core) and just want to be sure I have the ideal amount of RAM installed to ensure that Final Cut Studio, and in particular, Motion 3, run like a dream. Surely the best bet would be to install 16-32GB of RAM? Here is the link (previously kindly posted in this thread by Andy): Pro Apps on Nehalem Mac Pro - Cores? Memory? All suggestions really appreciated. Peter

July 1st, 2009, 01:15 PM	#45
Peter Dunphy Major Player Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: Belfast Northern Ireland Posts: 261	8 Core Raid Setup Newbie Hi Guys Am close to pulling the trigger, but am trying to finalise my Raid / backup. Any suggestions on my below setup would be really appreciated: - Mac Pro 8 Core 2.66GHZ 6GB 1TB Radeon HD 4870 512MB - 12 GB RAM - 1 * WD caviar green 1TB SATAII 3.5" 32MB cache internal hard drive (Just one additional internal drive to backup the system boot drive with Time Machine - is this sensible?) - As regards an affordable Raid 5 solution I've been quoted the below item from a supplier. However, my amateur Raid research has led me to believe that software Raid's (consume CPU) aren't as good as hardware Raids. For the below item, will I also need to purchase the "G-Technology PCI express RAID controller" to complement it? Here's the quote from the supplier in response to me requesting an affordable Raid 5 solution: "Just keep the one disk in the mac pro ( or maybe 2, so you can have a backup of your system) Forget the raid card and internal disks - use one of these instead - G-Technology G-SPEED eS 4TB eSATA External Hard Drive Its external, so if your mac breaks then you can still get to your storage. You can also transfer it to use on a different machine. Its fast enough to cope with 3 streams of video at prores format. Costs about the same as the mac pro with internal raid and disks" - If this Raid 5 setup looks okay, and actually can perform a Raid 5 setup, would I be able to expand to include additional hard drives in the Raid if I needed more space in a year or two? Any suggestions whatsoever would be really appreciated. Thanks Andy and Niels for your valuable feedback.

June 19th, 2009, 10:11 AM	#31
Niels Neeskens Regular Crew Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Almelo Posts: 177	Well, I am still waiting for my 8 Gig Ram from a 3rd party, I would probably have ordered it from Apple even though it's more expensive. I am waiting for a month now and got a tracking number for UPS which doesn't work! Otherwise, I am very happy with the machine. At one point I couldn't log in, because of a major error in the update of the software (don't update with filevault running!!!). I am not so happy with Apple in general lately, because next to that I had my Macbook Pro for repair and I got it back more broken then ever. It had a big dent and couldn't close anymore. But the machine is great and makes working with video editing so much nicer and faster. I never regretted it for a second. Cheers

June 19th, 2009, 12:13 PM	#32
Erick Munari Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: New York Posts: 161	Thanks for the reply Niels. Would you be willing to tell us who is your RAM dealer so we know not to order from them. I have a MAcBookPro/FCP2 configuration as well, rendering, compression and encoding time are a bummer and it sounds like the laptop could just blow up sometimes from so much strain, thus the apparent need for the MacPro. How is it for instance, what it takes me about 5hrs of compression from ProRes to Mpeg2 on the laptop, what would say it takes on your MP? Sorry to hear Apple has been so lame, it seems that the bigger the company the lesser the service. Take care.

June 20th, 2009, 05:30 AM	#33
Niels Neeskens Regular Crew Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Almelo Posts: 177	Hey Erick, I wanna wait a little longer before I put them on the black list. I've send them an email and hope for a responds that will get me further with the whole deal. If I don't hear from them and don't have the RAM next week, I'll let you guys know. My MacBook Pro (they hurt my baby :( is one of the first generations and as you described compression is a bummer. I would say it's at least 10 times as fast, so saving a lot of time. I can only imagine it will be even more with Snow Leopard. The bigger thing for me is the rendering. I hate it when I am working on a project and it takes long for rendering the effects in it. It takes me out of my workflow. If this sounds familiar to you, I wouldn't hesitate for a second and buy the new machine. Cheers

June 20th, 2009, 10:52 AM	#34
Nigel Barker Inner Circle Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Norwich, Norfolk, UK Posts: 3,531	I always order RAM direct from Crucial. They guarantee it to work on your particular machine & deliver very quickly to me here in France shipping from the UK. Their prices are among the cheapest. When I bought my Mac Pro (2008 model) I ordered the RAM from Crucial on the same day as the system from Apple & the memory arrived before the workstation. When I opened up the Mac to upgrade the memory I found that the factory installed RAM was Crucial too. It didn't even have a special Apple sticker to double the price. Of course if you may have ordered from Crucial as I seem to recall that they ship by UPS. In which case chase them up as they are normally exceptionally good. Maybe the problem is with UPS?

June 20th, 2009, 01:07 PM	#35
Niels Neeskens Regular Crew Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Almelo Posts: 177	Hey Nigel, No it's not Crucial, well I guess it's not so bad to say the name. The company I've ordered from is transintl.com. I ordered the 8GB Kit (4x2GB) DDR3 1066MHz (PC8500) ECC SDRAM: for $142.00 Maybe it is UPS, I've send them an email, but no responds yet. I'll give them a call monday about what's going on. I've checked the Crucial site and did the system check. It recognized the MacPro as a Mac Pro (4-core Xeon 3500 Series) 3rd Gen, but it is a 8-core 2,66 Ghz. Don't know how that happened. They are more expensive, but maybe I'll go to them next time.

June 25th, 2009, 03:49 AM	#37
Niels Neeskens Regular Crew Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Almelo Posts: 177	Hey Andy, Maybe you know the answer to this problem. So as you know I've the Mac Pro 8-core 2,66 Ghz. In QMaster I've made this setup: - Quickcluster with services - Enabled the share and manage for compressor - Options for selected services is 4 Instances - Quickcluster name is Niels's Virtual Cluster But if I use Compressor and select the virtual cluster to use every core it doesn't work. What am I doing wrong here? Cheers

June 25th, 2009, 04:17 AM	#38
Niels Neeskens Regular Crew Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Almelo Posts: 177	I knew the answer all ready, but somehow I didn't do it the right way. I've send the project directly to compressor, but I had to make a Quicktime Movie of it and then export it into Compressor :)

June 25th, 2009, 04:41 AM	#39
Niels Neeskens Regular Crew Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Almelo Posts: 177	I knew the answer all ready, but somehow I didn't do it the right way. I've send the project directly to compressor, but I had to make a Quicktime Movie of it and then export it into Compressor :)

June 25th, 2009, 05:08 AM	#40
Niels Neeskens Regular Crew Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Almelo Posts: 177	I knew the answer all ready, but somehow I didn't do it the right way. I've send the project directly to compressor, but I had to make a Quicktime Movie of it and then export it into Compressor :)

June 25th, 2009, 02:17 PM	#41
Erick Munari Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: New York Posts: 161	Thank you Andy and Neils, now another question: Have you heard of and if so about the Nividia 285? I have read different opinions as for how it compares with its competitor the ATA Radeon HD480. My purchase, for economical reasons will be the 8core 2.26, usingnFCP2/HDV to ProRes/Compressor to M2v/DVD Studio 2 workflow, videos of 1 to 2hr avarage. Glad to hear about the non-Apple monitors Andy, and congratulations on your site as well. Erick

June 29th, 2009, 09:50 AM	#43
Niels Neeskens Regular Crew Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Almelo Posts: 177	Erick, I haven't heard about the Nividia 285, so I can't help you with that. Peter, the max RAM is 32GB for the 8-core and 12 (or 16) for the quad-core. Only thing is that the 4 GB is still very expensive, so a total of 16 (8x2) is max. for me at the moment.

June 29th, 2009, 09:53 AM	#44
Erick Munari Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: New York Posts: 161	Thanks anyway Neils, so far, the video card 285 looks promissing, but no test drives from real people I have heard of yet.