Mac Pro 3.0 or 3.2 (sorry if this has been asked)
by Robert Combs
on
Sep 28, 2008 at 2:57:44 pm
Hi,
I'm kina new to Dual 8 core stuff. However, I have an urgent need to buy an new fast Mac (this coming week). I want to build this thing so that it is great at running After Effects (CS3). However, I think my main question is really between the 3.0 and 3.2 Ghz flavors... Would the .2 difference be that noticable? Or, is it more for "braggin rights"? Are there any posted speet test between these two? Bottom line...and I know this is a subjective question but is it worth the extra $800?
Any thoughts, comments or advice are greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Rob
p.s. -I'm sorry if this sort of question has been posted before. I've been searching for about 45mins and I only found where someone else asked this question within another post and never received an answer.
Re: Mac Pro 3.0 or 3.2 (sorry if this has been asked) by Jan Sherlink on Sep 28, 2008 at 8:08:44 pm
There is a noticable difference, 1.6GHz (8*0.2) to be exact.
But working in AE, a 3.0GHz Octocore with 16GB Ram and 3disk Raid0 will surely beat a 3.2GHz 4 GB Ram and single disk setup.
Re: Mac Pro 3.0 or 3.2 (sorry if this has been asked) by Kevin Camp on Sep 29, 2008 at 4:10:28 pm
jan's right... that .2ghz is multiplied by the 8 cores that can be used by ae's multiprocessing render engine in cs3 (and cs4). so it may be worth the $800 if that $800 isn't sacrificing something else, like ram or a fast disk array.
Re: Mac Pro 3.0 or 3.2 (sorry if this has been asked) by Jan Sherlink on Oct 1, 2008 at 3:25:00 pm
Let's say you have a Comp with 4 uncompressed QT's and you render to an uncompressed QT, and you render with Multiprocessing enabled. (8cores = 16 GB Ram advised)
If you're using a single disk... the bottleneck of your system will be the harddrive !! There's to much data that needs to be fed to the processors so your 8 processors will only use about 20% of their power.
The cheapest solution:
use internal drives, 1 for the OS and 3 for Raid0
otherwise check the adverts on this page for external solutions.
Re: Mac Pro 3.0 or 3.2 (sorry if this has been asked) by Kevin Camp on Oct 1, 2008 at 5:24:34 pm
i would recommend a pci-e sata2 host adapter and external sata2 striped drive array. if you have your disk array on the same internal sata bus as the main drive, you'll still likely get a bottle neck with disk cache enabled in ae.
barefeats.com has several reveiws/benchmarks of various sata2 cards and raid configs, as does amug.com. although sas is very fast, i would lean towards sata2 over sas for the disk array just based on price per gb. but you could look at an sas drive as the main drive, the small read/write times are great on sas drives which make them a good choice for boot drives and disk cache drives. the newer western digital velociraptor (sata2) has also good benchmarks and will now easily install in a mac pro internal drive bay.
Re: Mac Pro 3.0 or 3.2 (sorry if this has been asked) by Kevin Camp on Oct 1, 2008 at 9:26:18 pm
it depends a little bit on what you'll be working with... i think a single stream of uncompressed hd is around 160mb/sec... that is pretty easy to achieve, but that would be the flat out minimum to capture a single stream of hd.
if you were editing uncompressed hd, you would need double that to get realtime playback of something as simple as a crossfade between 2 clips.
in compositing you may composite several clips together, so it kind of depends on what you need... i guess if i had to give a target, 320mb/sec minimum would probably be a decent place to start. 320mb/sec is not too hard achieve and should give you a pretty wide array of choices. and, if you are working in hd, quite a bit of your footage will probably be compressed, and that will have a much lighter data rate.
Re: Mac Pro 3.0 or 3.2 (sorry if this has been asked) by Robert Combs on Oct 3, 2008 at 3:39:21 pm
Thanks Jan and Kevin!
I think I'll pull the trigger on the 3.2 sysem with 16 Gigs of ram on Monday.
As far as drives go, you've convinced me. I'm going to need something kind of fast..
Here's what i've discovered. I'd love to know what you think...
I've been quoted a 5x500 GB SATA II drive RAID (internal within the Mac Pro using MaxConnect optical Bay) with sustained data rate of 500+MB/sec for $429. From this company called.. MaxUpgrades.com
Have you ever heard of them? Any additional advice is always appreciated.
This whole thing is a pretty big purchase for me as I am not a wealthy man.
Re: Mac Pro 3.0 or 3.2 (sorry if this has been asked) by Jan Sherlink on Oct 4, 2008 at 8:04:38 am
I'm not a real Mac-Hardware specialist, so somebody correct me if i'm wrong...
Your Mac supports 4 internal SataII connections, so if your using 5 disks, you'll still need a PCIe Raid controller.
I don't know Maxupgrades, but the site is all about Power Mac G5, so check that the "Maxconnect Optical Drive Bay" fits in a Intel Xeon system !!!
