MP 7,1 12 core vs 16 core & 2TB SSD vs 8TB SSD

[LEOMODE]

I am finalizing my Mac Pro 7,1 purchase, and CPU/SSD are my last hurdles in choosing.

I know what the performances are and I'm sure I'll be fine with 12 core and 2TB SSD as a bare minimum, but I want to know more about the depreciation value so if it'll be just better to buy it now than later.

For CPU, currently, I need to pay $900 more to upgrade from 12 to 16 core, but in the future, I'm sure it'll be cheaper just like how 5,1 CPU's are these days. But, would you guys think it'll be way cheaper than now, to say if I were to just upgrade to 28 core in the future for instance? 10 years later, 3.46ghz 12 core which was the highest CPU upgrade you can do with 5,1, is now only about $200. I don't know how much it was back then to upgrade to the highest CPU BTO. So I want to know the depreciation rate.

For the SSD, it's a bit different. SSD technology has been evolving from 3.5 HDD to 2.5 SSD to SATA 2 to SATA 3 to NVME now. The SSD storage prices have been pretty much similar despite having similar storage due to the technology advancing. I remember buying 1TB 2.5 SSD for $500, which is also similar to NVME ($400 for Samsung). I tried justifying 8TB but it is just so expensive! And storage usage is heavily subjective so it's hard to predict how much I would need in the future (currently I had to save space for my 1TB usage in applications also which was unexpected).

I know you might say just get external SSD in various ways (RAID/SATA/PCI-E) but I trust Apple's OEM for reliability, the T2 mechanism that'll be less headache in using external slots (built-in SATA/PCI-E), just installing applications and related files on one Apple SSD will be more convenient, and I know I'll have to pay a similar price for non-Apple SSD's anyway including controllers (8TB is about $2k anyway).

So would it be beneficial and economical to just go with 12 core and 2TB SSD which is the bare minimum I would need for my usage, and just get whatever I need for the future, or just buy the maximum I wanted and take the loss?

I know everyone's' usages and needs are different but I'm sure as a Mac Pro shopper you guys also had to tackle this challenge. Your experience would be greatly appreciated!

 

[OkiRun]

You can see my signature with specs. Once out of the box and the setup and migration were complete, have had no issues. This machine is one of four workstations in a film studio. The 7,1 has its quirks that we are all learning. I went with the basic RAM configuration and upgraded in the office. I would not change a thing from my original BTO. Even though it has the Pro Vega Duo, the machine is not allowed to sleep. It runs 24/7 (save updates) with screen saver. Nothing new has been added to the interior of the computer. It's running FCPX and Adobe CC (PP) with no issues. It has had some fusses about old external Seagate hdds not showing up in Finder. I bought some new ones and now no issues. Hope this helps your thinking of the matter.

I received some great advice and discussions with members on these threads which really guided my decisions. And it was for the better I believe.

 

[LEOMODE]

You can see my signature with specs. Once out of the box and the setup and migration were complete, have had no issues. This machine is one of four workstations in a film studio. The 7,1 has its quirks that we are all learning. I went with the basic RAM configuration and upgraded in the office. I would not change a thing from my original BTO. Even though it has the Pro Vega Duo, the machine is not allowed to sleep. It runs 24/7 (save updates) with screen saver. Nothing new has been added to the interior of the computer. It's running FCPX and Adobe CC (PP) with no issues. It has had some fusses about old external Seagate hdds not showing up in Finder. I bought some new ones and now no issues. Hope this helps your thinking of the matter.

I received some great advice and discussions with members on these threads which really guided my decisions. And it was for the better I believe.

thanks for your reply. Do you not use any extra storage using pcie or sata?

 

[Nugget]

thanks for your reply. Do you not use any extra storage using pcie or sata?

In my opinion, the days of putting spinning rust inside a workstation are long past. The appropriate interface for hard disk storage is the 10 gigabit ethernet connection to a NAS in the closet or another room. There you don't need to worry about noise and heat and you can use a filesystem that is more appropriate for large volumes of data (zfs or btrfs). I use a FreeNAS Mini XL+ stuffed with WD Red Drives. That gives me simple cloud backups, snapshots, data checksumming, and all sorts of useful data management tools. It's also a handy Time Machine target for backing up my macOS boot drives.

USB/Thunderbolt hard drives can be handy for shuttling data from site to site, but I have found them to be an unsatisfying solution for routine use.

My strategy is to buy Apple native SSD storage sized reasonably and keeping my wallet in mind. If I do need more local storage then I'll augment the T2 boot volume with PCIe NVME SSD cards. They're cheap and simple and fast. But, honestly, 4TB and 8TB seems comfortable for my workloads today.

 

[OkiRun]

thanks for your reply. Do you not use any extra storage using pcie or sata?

I agree with Nugget. There was a nagging voice in my head that kept saying buy and stick with the stock setup and wait until other people have worked out the bugs. I'm so glad that I did this system of effort. Having the large Apple 8tb has allowed fast and easy film work and then export those files to external storage for later if needed. Lots of posters are having good success with internal ssd cards although I've read of many issues too. I'm going to wait. Right now, I have over 32tb worth of external hdd disks running for time machine and file storage/access.

[edited] all for the 7,1 dedication. The PCs in the office have their own dedicated external file storage system.

 

[LeonPro]

It would be hard to hedge on pricing early at this rate seeing people who purchased the Mac Pro plan to upgrade their CPU down the road so this can affect future pricing.

The smart thing would be to buy exactly what you need. And if your needs change, that's when you upgrade. Otherwise, I would just buy what I can afford today just because.

For me from a video editing standpoint living in crappy Adobe CC environment, more cores is a detriment on performance especially as speed decreases. So 12 cores would be ideal, but I couldn't resist getting 16 cores since it's a slight hit in single core speed. Anything past 16 cores for me in Adobe-land, I might as well just use my MBP.

I would save that money from getting more cores and put it in memory. The max I'm putting out based on my workflow is 60GB but I also wanted to populate all 12 dimm slots to get 100% efficiency which is why I ended up with 96GB.

Apple SSD is relatively cheap so it makes sense to invest in 4TB including having multi-OS option and storing video and audio assets.

A separate PCIe SSD for the actual editing drive. And an 8TB internal HDD for Time Machine supplemented by an external NAS for redundant Time Machine backup as well as long term storage.

 

[patrick.a]

According to Geekbench the single core performance of all the cpus 12 core and up is the same. The 12 core scores 1124 and the 16 core is at 1127 - this is not a real life difference. So if you your apps don‘t scale with threads there‘s really no point in going beyond 12 cores. Is PS even able to use that many threads?

I went with 12 core even though I could use the extra 4 cores for my renderings. But this was because I thought I can still update the CPU in three years and give it a boost and also I‘m running on a tight budget and didn‘t want to get too close to 10‘000 with this machine and rather leave some flexibility for a GPU upgrade whenever RDNA2 becomes available.

 

[LEOMODE]

Thanks everyone. I eventually settled and purchased the following:

• 12 core
• 32GB RAM (will upgrade to 48GB)
• single W5700X (I play games and with Navi I think this will be better than more priced Vega II)
• 4TB (yes, not 2TB and not 8TB)

CPU: So I bought a 6 core 5,1 back in 2010 because I was told most games rarely even use 4 core back then, and it had the fastest core speed at 3.33ghz. But these days I do notice 6 core felt slightly less, and I thought it'll be a wiser choice to just bump it up to 16, but as others said above, it doesn't look like I'll be needing 4 extra cores at lower clock speed. Of course, I might need it in the future, so I'll test it within 14 days by turning on all of my apps and see if it pushes it.

RAM: I have 48GB of RAM and I never used more than 32GB. So I think 48GB will be good enough for me.

GPU: I play games and with Navi, I think it's dumb to buy Vega II at a higher price in my case.

SSD: The hardest decision I had to make. I use both Mac OS and more on Windows. I was using about 800GB on Windows realizing that 1TB was cutting close. Another thing was I just wanted a boot drive on the main storage. I do have some backups such as photos/videos for my kid but I can always make those libraries elsewhere and getting 4TB instead of 2TB will give me some breathing room to work on some projects if necessary at a faster speed.

Am I the only one that feels always needing to default the install/saving location or library location to another drive cumbersome? I tried doing that a long time ago but sometimes I would forget to change the location so for me always having a breathing room on my main OS location is good for me (I can always move them around to the desired location). I know I had to spend more than I had to for Apple OEM SSD vs getting a non-Apple NVME separately installed on PCI-E, but that's just how it is I guess (heck I even bought wheels too for looks and mobility haha!).

For extra storage though, I am thinking about either getting the SATA or PCI-E, but PCI-E is very expensive at this moment. My kids' photos/videos and work-related data are about 4TB and I would need Time Machine related backup for both Mac OS and Windows so I don't think I would need 32TB like other people, and maybe 8TB would be good enough. (I already have 4TB NAS).

One last question: Is using HDD SATA for storing videos and working off on video editing be slower than using it on my Apple OEM SSD? I do remember there was a slight difference in launching apps/games for instance on SSD vs HDD (which was noticeable for me), but I wasn't sure about using the video library off of HDD to work on.

Thanks, everyone.

 

[LeonPro]

I wouldn't work off an HDD drive for video editing. I have an HDD for Time Machine back up and that's all it's used. For video editing the minimum I would work off is an SSD HD if you're doing FHD plus effects. Otherwise, I would strongly consider an PCIE NVME route.

 

[LEOMODE]

I wouldn't work off an HDD drive for video editing. I have an HDD for Time Machine back up and that's all it's used. For video editing the minimum I would work off is an SSD HD if you're doing FHD plus effects. Otherwise, I would strongly consider an PCIE NVME route.

Appreciate sharing your experience. I would agree too. NVME is just too expensive so I guess I'll have to use it on my OEM SSD for now.

 

[LeonPro]

That's fine. In the old days it makes sense to split drives - OS, media, scratch disk, render - due to speed bottleneck of HDD. Unless you're working in extremely large files of multiple streams (i.e. RED, Alexa) one single NVMe SSD works.

I would just ensure you have a backup when all your eggs are in one basket.