First, let’s be clear: The new MacPro is not yet shipping. So, like a group of blind folks describing an elephant, we are getting a lot of different opinions on what this new animal is.
Second, the instant Apple revealed it at the WWDC last spring, I wanted one.
Third, buying new hardware is stressful and expensive; especially when it comes to hardware essential to our business.
So, the question I want to answer today is: Since I need to save my pennies to buy this, where do I get the best bang for the buck? And my answers are the same if I were working with Final Cut Pro X, Adobe Premiere CC, or audio editing in ProTools or Audition.
If money means nothing to you, then buy the system with all the bells and whistles. Then, sit back and smirk while the rest of us hate you. For most of us, buying hardware is a trade-off between what we want and what we can afford. In other words, if finding the balance between the best performance at the best price is important to you, this article is for you.
BACKGROUND
Last week, Apple posted more details about the MacPro (including performance and tech specs): http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/
They also announced two configurations: a four-core CPU system starting at $2,999 and a six-core CPU system starting at $3,999. Within those two categories, Apple has not yet announced any other options or pricing. The MacPro is scheduled to ship in December. No date was announced.
Based on what we know, there are five areas we can spend money on with this unit:
So, given these choices, where should we spend our money?
WHERE’S THE BEST BANG FOR THE BUCK?
Surprisingly, it isn’t the CPU. Any CPU today can easily edit video – even high-resolution video. If you are editing single stream video, even high-resolution, the four-core system will be more than adequate. More cores will be helpful with multicam editing.
Because rendering and exporting is off-loaded to the GPU, a screamingly-fast CPU is not as important as it was in years past. Again, more cores and faster CPU speed is nice, but no longer essential. There are better places to put your money.
Specifically, the best place to spend your money is on the GPU. Get the fastest one you can afford, with as much VRAM as possible. Whether you are editing with Premiere Pro CC or Final Cut Pro X, both max out GPU performance.
RAM is user-upgradeable. This means that you can buy less than you might ultimately need, then upgrade as RAM prices come down and third-party vendors provide reliable upgrades. For me, I’d start with a minimum of 8 GB, then add RAM via third-parties.
NOTE: I don’t expect a lot of RAM options to be available at launch. It will probably take suppliers like Kingston – www.kingston.com – or Crucial – www.crucial.com – a while to ramp up to meet demand.
SECOND NOTE: I spoke with the folks at Kingston earlier today, who told me that, according to the specs of the MacPro: “It can take [RAM] up to 1866MHz in speed, and up to 16GB modules in each of the four slots. We will have memory for this. [Since] the product will be released in December we don’t have an ETA on our memory yet.”
STORAGE
The Mac Pro supports up to 1 TB of SSD (Solid State Drive) storage. First, you don’t need that much, and second, I’m not convinced SSDs are the way to go for media. Instead, an SSD drive is ideally suited for the boot drive. I have an SSD-enhanced iMac (a Fusion drive) that goes from powered off to fully operational in nine seconds. I expect the MacPro to be even faster.
SSD drives are ideal for files that are accessed over and over. This means that you get the best performance when accessing operating system and application files. This also means that you don’t need to get the biggest SSD; the OS and applications you get will never fill it.
Let me give you a specific example. On my current MacPro, my Application folder contains the entire Adobe CS6 and CC Suites, plus the entire Final Cut Studio (3) Suite, FCP X, and every plug-in and software gewgaw known to the mind of man. And the total Application folder takes only 42 GB to store.
In fact, everything on my boot drive – EVERYTHING – is only 220 GB. (And that includes a desktop folder that holds more files than I will ever admit to storing in public.) A boot drive of 250 GB is more than adequate for the OS and applications.
NOTE: There’s an axiom in the storage business that the faster a unit transfers data, the less data it can hold and the more it costs.
Rather than buy a large, internal SSD drive, I plan to spend a small fortune on a high-speed, fully-loaded Thunderbolt RAID 5 with a minimum of 8 drives. THAT provides all the storage and performance I need — even for editing 2K multicam clips containing up to 30 angles!
Think about it. Shoots are creating more and more media. My recent 13-episode 2 Reel Guys shoot geneerated 1.5 TB of data. There is no reason this should be stored on a boot drive. External media is plenty fast, holds a ton of media and can be easily transported from one place to another.
Spend your money on external storage, not the internal SSD drive.
A NOTE ON SPEED
Simply connecting a single hard drive to a computer via Thunderbolt does NOT mean you are getting Thunderbolt speeds. Just the opposite. As a rough measure, a spinning hard disk that is not enhanced with a small internal SSD booster, can read and write data about 120 MB/second, whether it is connected by USB 3 or Thunderbolt. (FireWire, by contrast, slows the drive down to about 80 MB/second.)
This means that in order to get the speed you expect from a Thunderbolt connection, you need to keep combining drives in a single unit (which is what a RAID is). To fully saturate (fill) a Thunderbolt 2 pipe, you would need a RAID containing about 20 drives!
A THOUGHT ON SLOTS
There’s been a lot of complaining about the lack of PCIe slots on the MacPro. I’m sympathetic, but, frankly, I’m not bothered by this.
Every significant vendor who supplies hardware to the Mac community is working on Thunderbolt devices. AJA, ATTO, Blackmagic Design, Matrox, Sonnet — all of them. Why? Because Thunderbolt devices are easier to install, configure, and, most importantly, support.
Plus, the new hardware data bus inside the Mac Pro is faster than the PCIe bus we’ve been using in current MacPros.
NOTE: For those with significant investments in PCIe cards, Sonnet has announced an expansion chassis that holds the cards and converts the interface into Thunderbolt 2.
For me, the simplicity of plugging in what I need and getting on with my work FAR outweighs the slight performance increase that might be obtained by custom-building a system. (Then, again, I’ve never been fascinated by doing my own home or car repairs. Others, though, find it fascinating. Each to his own.) I prefer getting work done to wasting time configuring; and Thunderbolt 2 is so blazingly fast, that I don’t expect to ever fully utilize it; even for high-resolution media.
SUMMARY
I plan to buy a new Mac Pro the week they ship, though probably not the first day. (As I’ve written before, I prefer to let someone else intercept the first arrows.)
I’ll spend more money on the GPU than the CPU. And I’m already looking for storage for this system. As we get closer, I’ll let you know what I decide to buy and how I configured it.
As always, I’m interested in your opinions.
Larry
96 Responses to Larry’s Thoughts on the New MacPro
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Don Warren says:
October 27, 2013 at 6:41 pm
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Larry Jordan says:
October 28, 2013 at 7:58 am
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Sy says:
December 2, 2013 at 1:50 pm
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Larry Jordan says:
December 2, 2013 at 2:51 pm
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Mark Bridges says:
October 28, 2013 at 5:39 am
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Larry Jordan says:
October 28, 2013 at 7:59 am
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Mark Bridges says:
October 28, 2013 at 12:20 pm
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William Hohauser says:
October 28, 2013 at 5:40 am
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Lewis Wilson says:
October 28, 2013 at 7:00 am
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Sjoerd says:
October 28, 2013 at 7:42 am
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Larry Jordan says:
October 28, 2013 at 8:01 am
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Todd Hudson says:
October 28, 2013 at 8:18 am
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Dr. Doug says:
October 28, 2013 at 10:16 am
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October 28, 2013 at 8:20 am
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Braden says:
October 29, 2013 at 1:48 pm
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Braden says:
October 29, 2013 at 1:51 pm
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Frank T says:
October 28, 2013 at 8:34 am
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Larry Jordan says:
October 28, 2013 at 8:46 am
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Eric Hansen says:
October 28, 2013 at 9:00 am
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Frank T says:
October 28, 2013 at 9:28 am
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Larry says:
October 28, 2013 at 9:22 am
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Larry says:
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Tim Kolb says:
October 28, 2013 at 10:35 am
Newer Comments →Larry. I’m getting a new MacPro when they come out. Was wondering about any extra graphics cards needed for my HD display? Will likely use FCP X and Adobe CC. Also, if I am planning on doing 4K work, how beefy do I need to configure my system? Will eventually have 4K display. Currently, I use a Kona 3 card in my system with FCP 7. Have been waiting for the new MacPro before I upgrade.
I have always enjoyed your work and humor. Keep it up.
Peace,
Don Warren
Don:
No extra graphics cards needed. All the GPU power you could want is inside the new MacPro.
And this article assumes you want to edit 4K, so use this as a general spec until Apple announces final configurations.
Larry
How does (if at all) the new MacPro using the AMD GPU’s, perform the ray-tracing function as provided by NVIDIA TESLA card in collaboration with NVIDIA QUADRO line of cards
Sy:
Good question and I don’t know the answer. We’ll have to wait for the new Mac Pro to ship to learn more.
Larry
Hi Larry
I’m looking to buy the MacPro as well. I’ve edited with FCP7 on my MacBook Pro and nevere needed Sound or Graphics cards for 2K footage – will i need to buys these as extras when I configure my system?
Thanks!
Mark:
Mac’s have never needed additional sound or graphics cards. They ship with what you’ll need.
Larry
Music to my ears – thanks for you help!
The question for me is how programs like Compressor or the DCP file generator I use which are CPU dependent will behave in these new MacPro computers. DCPs take a long time to render and want lots of cores.
My system: 2.7 Ghz i7 quad core CPU, 1 GIG GPU, 8 GIGS of RAM on 15.4 inch screen that is 1680 pixels wide, with a 1 Terrabyte, 5400 rpm internal HD bought about Feb. 2013
Hi Larry, I chose a 1 Terrabyte, 5400rpm hard drive when I bought my 15.4 inch MacBook Pro early in 2013. Have I made a bad decision on this drive speed ?? I am thinking of using Adobe Premiere and it seems to require a 7200rpm drive. I am running Final Cut Pro X at this time. I want to at lease edit well in 1080HD. Do I need to upgrade my Hard Drive ? If so, could you list the recommended upgrade paths from the less expensive choices first ?
(One complaint against my current FCPX is the Ken Burns effect comes out stuffed with unacceptable artifacts on stills. Ken Burns works great on iMovie but Apple seems to have removed iDVD so I could not burn my production to DVD from iMovie. This makes me wonder about switching to Adobe Premiere. I definitely want to author BlueRay discs as well.)
Thanks in Advance Larry
Lewis Wilson
Never edit from internal drive, use a USB3 or Thunderbold drive for your media, and if you want you can install a SSD in to you MacBook pro
Lewis:
I agree with Sjoerd – never edit media on an internal drive. This is true for both FCP and Premiere. Always use an external drive. Ideally 7200 rpm. Even more ideally, a two-drive RAID 0 or better.
Larry
Great article! I’m with Larry and will wait to purchase a Mac Pro after the vanguard. Why do you say “never edit media from an internal drive”?
Because you don’t want to slow down the reading/writing of your video files when the computer has to go to the same hard drive to read your video application files.
How do you rack-mount this bad boy? 🙂
Here you go. Can you imagine the power you could pull out of this?
http://www.slashgear.com/mac-pro-rack-servers-make-lego-like-array-with-macstadium-18286919/
Full details: http://www.macstadium.com/blog/new-mac-pro-hosting-and-colocation-will-be-here-soon/
HI Larry, Your advice is always spot on – thanks. My question is I am shopping for a RAID 5 set of drives. I am ideally planning for Thunderbolt 2. I don’t know if that is realistic.
What vendor for “high-speed, fully-loaded Thunderbolt RAID 5 with a minimum of 8 drives” are you considering?
Which vendors will likely introduce Thunderbolt 2 on a timely basis?
I am not having much luck finding RAID 5 drives of substance using Thunderbolt.
Many thanks. Your the man!
Frank
Frank:
Yeah. You have hit the proverbial nail right on the nubbin! This drives me nuts. Because the chip vendors are late creating Thunderbolt chips – OR Intel is very slow in approving them – OR everyone was waiting for Thunderbolt 2 – OR there’s a vast conspiracy to drive us all back to using floppy disks ….
Anyway, these things are scarcer than hen’s teeth.
There are two vendors currently that I know about: Promise, with their Pegasys line, and Areca, with CineRAID. At this point, no other drive manufacturer is on the record as providing RAID 5. I suspect there is a LOT of drama going on behind the scenes, but at this point, our options are limited.
I am truly hoping this is resolved before the launch of the MacPro.
Larry
Hey Frank
Only Promise has announced TB2 RAIDs, the Pegasus2 series: http://www.promise.com/promotion_page/promotion_page.aspx?region=en-US&rsn=166
Areca will probably update their ARC-8050 to Thunderbolt 2 soon. Currently, the TB1 version is available at Maxx Digital as the ThunderRAID: http://www.maxxdigital.com/thunderraid-380.html
with 8 drives in RAID5 or RAID6, there probably will be very little if any speed difference between TB1 and TB2. Here, the drives are still the limiting factor as Larry points out above.
Thanks Eric and Larry. This is a great help.
Larry,
Thanks for another great article. I will definitely be purchasing a new Mac Pro when it comes out in December and I found your article to be quite helpful in preparing me for the choices that I will face once Apple provides full pricing detail on various configurations of the new Mac Pro.
A quandary that you did not address in your article is what monitor to purchase for use with the new Mac Pro. Right now Apple’s Thunderbolt displays are not 4K and in fact only have USB 2 ports on them. I hate to purchase a pair of these for the new Mac Pro, but I am concerned that the very few 4K monitors out there by Sharp and Asus, for example, will not work well with the Mac Pro. Do you have any thoughts on monitors (4K or otherwise) that you would consider for the new Mac Pro that you plan to purchase?
Again, thanks for all the great training articles and for the hard work you put into your weekly newsletter.
Tom
Tom:
Well… I don’t know anything. But.
Apple would not be touting its support for 4K computer monitors if it didn’t have some idea about where we could buy them.
Larry
One area of the new Mac Pro that I find puzzling is the CPU configuration relative to the GPU. As anyone who has tested Adobe’s GPU acceleration knows, fast GPUs need serious input bandwidth upstream. The GPU itself doesn’t slice up an operation into 200 or 300 pieces so that all those parallel cores can process the task…that has to be handled prior to the GPU. In other words, packing a system like this with two GPU cards but running one CPU is like putting a bigger engine in a car for more power, but keeping a small fuel line for economy.
Putting more GPU power in a system without balancing that with adequate CPU power to ‘administrate’ the process will simply add more parallel cores using power and waiting for data.
Larry, had a discussion this morning with the Engineer responsible for keeping our editing systems running, and he is adamant that he can put together a PC with equal or more power than anything Apple makes, for a cost at least 30% cheaper than a Mac Pro. He calls this difference the “Apple Tax.” We currently have 4 MacPros in our dept., and all the editors would prefer to stay with Apple computers, but we may be forced to move to PCs, based solely on cost. Do you have any comments that we can use to “save” us from this fate?
Do a test.
Have him build one system and compare it to a MacPro. The comparison is NOT solely on lowest component cost, but how much of his time is needed to build and maintain the system, configuring it for video editing, virus preventtion (and the slow-downs caused by that software), cost of purchasing applications and configuring all drivers so that everything works.
By the time you add everything together, including maintenance, the “Tax” will be FAR less than you think
Then, run the two side by side and see which performs better.
Larry
I would be surprised if you could match configuration with like components on a self-assembled machine as the AMD GPU specs alone would cost more than the whole Mac Pro to match with retail (or even wholesale) AMD product.
I think that the best way to justify a new MacPro will be to insist on FCPX as the edit software. I have to believe that Apple has worked some magic into their own hardware/software relationship that competitive software manufacturers won’t have access to…
As far as the cost of the configurations, I think that the key factor is whether or not the MacPro will have some magical way to really lean into the GPU power in the system with a single CPU and affordable amounts of RAM. (yes…redundant with my post above).
Even Windows systems with a single CPU don’t really utilize the capacity of huge GPU cards for editing tasks (much less two of them), no matter how large the CPU is…it’s a matter of traffic capacity and the ability to buffer up all that data for each GPU core rapidly enough to keep them all working…
So…(at least on paper for the moment) the question will be whether one even needs to actually match the component parts in the MacPro to get NLE performance equal to it using the same editing software on another platform, and of course with FCPX there is no way to make that comparison anyway.