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12-Core Processor Option - Worth $1200?

W

WaspStar75

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 21, 2008
11
0
Hiya,

I'm looking to get the new Mac Pro and am kind of stumped at the processor option: Is the 2.93GHz option worth the extra $1200?

Granted, I do a good amount of HD rendering in Cinema 4D and After Effects, so any power is good. But will my world be forever changed by the extra 3GHz overall difference between the two? That adder seems a little steep.

Thanks!
~TPS
 
2.93GHz is about 10% faster than the 2.66GHz. You are paying 24% more $ (4999$ vs 6199$) for 10% performance upgrade. That's not the greatest ratio.

If you're ready to pay 1200$ so your encoding time will be 54 minutes instead of 60 minutes, then go for it. That 1200$ may be better spent on other components like SSDs and more RAM. Remember that you can upgrade the CPUs in the future too.
 
WaspStar75 said:
Hiya,

I'm looking to get the new Mac Pro and am kind of stumped at the processor option: Is the 2.93GHz option worth the extra $1200?

Granted, I do a good amount of HD rendering in Cinema 4D and After Effects, so any power is good. But will my world be forever changed by the extra 3GHz overall difference between the two? That adder seems a little steep.

Thanks!
~TPS
Click to expand...

The 2.93GHz 12 core occasionally shows up in the refurb store for $5259.

cheers
JohnG
 
Thanks for the input. I thought the same thing and needed to get some second opinions.

I'm upgrading from a 4 yr old quad-core so I suppose anything new will seem blazingly faster than now!

Thanks!
~TPS
 
If you're already getting 12-core, I would just spend that extra money on a good SSD, maybe another graphics card, more RAM, etc. The clock bump isn't worth that much money, IMO, unless that 10% extra time really makes a difference.
 
Are you doing this for a living? If so that's what, 2 day-rate maximum (if not one if you're good)? I'm sure you'll make that up in spades in a couple weeks time. If you are doing this for personal stuff and aren't freelance, just save some money, dump everything you can into as much ram as possible and learn to render over night. remember, the more cores you have, the more ram you need. My quad with 16GB of ram will smoke an octo with 16GB as the cores are being choked by only having 2GB assigned to each of them. So, if you have a budget, get the smaller clock speed 12-core and get more ram. It will work better than a higher clock speed machine with lesser ram.
 
gameface said:
My quad with 16GB of ram will smoke an octo with 16GB as the cores are being choked by only having 2GB assigned to each of them. So, if you have a budget, get the smaller clock speed 12-core and get more ram. It will work better than a higher clock speed machine with lesser ram.
Click to expand...

I don't think this works like you think it does... If both machines are using the full 16 gigs of RAM, they'll tie. The quad and the octo will both hit the same ceiling and both use the same amount of CPU...

As for the clock speed, get the higher clock speed. RAM is easy to upgrade later, and cheap. The CPU? Not so much. Get the CPU that you want to have for the next few years now, as RAM is a less costly upgrade. (But do upgrade the RAM asap too, it's just that CPU is more important to pick correctly at the start.)
 
goMac said:
I don't think this works like you think it does... If both machines are using the full 16 gigs of RAM, they'll tie. The quad and the octo will both hit the same ceiling and both use the same amount of CPU...
Click to expand...

Maybe on paper but not in real world applications. There is an extensive write up in regards to After Effects as to why exactly what I said and have experienced first hand happens. I'll try to find it.

But what I was getting at was, if he could afford the slightly higher clock speed but have to keep the stock 6GB of ram, the machine will not perform as well as the slightly slower clock speed version with the extra money equivalent in ram(Same cost but almost 48GB of memory).
 
Another option is the 3.33 GHz 6-core machine. I can't speak to your work, but in my work, 6 cores at 3.33 GHz is better than 12 cores at a slower speed. I currently own a 2.26 GHz 8-core 2009 Mac Pro, and I really would appreciate the faster CPU speed. But I'm waiting to upgrade until the Sandy Bridge Mac Pros become available.
 
gglockner said:
Another option is the 3.33 GHz 6-core machine. I can't speak to your work, but in my work, 6 cores at 3.33 GHz is better than 12 cores at a slower speed. I currently own a 2.26 GHz 8-core 2009 Mac Pro, and I really would appreciate the faster CPU speed. But I'm waiting to upgrade until the Sandy Bridge Mac Pros become available.
Click to expand...

In digital video and rendering, you want to go with more cores. Although more cores and more ghz is also always a good thing. :)
 
goMac said:
But, it's a lot more expensive because you're paying for both the old CPU's and the new ones. That's the trouble with upgrades.
Click to expand...

Key word here was "future" upgrade. There is also the option of getting an Octo and upgrading the cpu's in the near future that way not taking too much of a hit on the initial investment, but it all depends on the budget.
 
In regards to AE CS5, gameface is for the most part correct.

When you set up the multiprocessing preferences in AE, it needs at least 0.75GB of RAM per background process (it uses one CPU per process), but that is the bare minimum and is often not sufficient for working in HD frame sizes. Adobe recommends at least 2GB per processor when working in HD, so that means if you plan on say, dedicating 8 cores to AE for rendering, you'd ideally want at least 16GB of RAM dedicated to AE.

More RAM also yields faster RAM previews, of course.
 
JavaTheHut said:
Key word here was "future" upgrade. There is also the option of getting an Octo and upgrading the cpu's in the near future that way not taking too much of a hit on the initial investment, but it all depends on the budget.
Click to expand...

+1

Thats what I did

Getting 1333 ram

building my system and a year from now when 3.33 drop in price i can throw them in and the system would be ready
 
If you can afford it, go for it; there is no reason to compromise. Saving 12% on every task will more or less save you a lot of time over the course of your computer's lifetime.

Just be sure to upgrade the RAM as well.
 
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