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Is getting a 12 core machine future proofing my needs?

HD303

HD303

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 1, 2006
240
20
Observatory Park
I currently use Lightroom, Premier, Bridge and FCPX for my work needs. I'm also into music recording with DSD files. I plan on increasing my 4k video production as well as some hefty time-lapse work.

I believe my needs could be met with a 6 or 8 core system, but I can see where down the road as apps adjust to the nMP the need for a 12 core system could come into play and increase productivity.

Currently in my cart I have:
2.7GHz 12-core
16GB RAM (figure I can buy after market RAM for less money)
1TB Storage
Dual D700's


Thoughts?
 
HD303 said:
I currently use Lightroom, Premier, Bridge and FCPX for my work needs. I'm also into music recording with DSD files. I plan on increasing my 4k video production as well as some hefty time-lapse work.

I believe my needs could be met with a 6 or 8 core system, but I can see where down the road as apps adjust to the nMP the need for a 12 core system could come into play and increase productivity.

Currently in my cart I have:
2.7GHz 12-core
16GB RAM (figure I can buy after market RAM for less money)
1TB Storage
Dual D700's


Thoughts?
Click to expand...

If you are going to buy aftermarket RAM to with 12gb of RAM and save yourself $100. Also based on what you are doing, I'd consider scaling back to the 8 core since I doubt you will max out the cores very often and the 8 core the same turbo boost clocks as the 4 and 6 whereas the 12 core has a lower max speed. That's how I'd spend MY money that is....
 
HD303 said:
I currently use Lightroom, Premier, Bridge and FCPX for my work needs. I'm also into music recording with DSD files. I plan on increasing my 4k video production as well as some hefty time-lapse work.

I believe my needs could be met with a 6 or 8 core system, but I can see where down the road as apps adjust to the nMP the need for a 12 core system could come into play and increase productivity.

Currently in my cart I have:
2.7GHz 12-core
16GB RAM (figure I can buy after market RAM for less money)
1TB Storage
Dual D700's


Thoughts?
Click to expand...

I'm in a similar position but use after effects and cinema 4d. And I like to game, just can't make my mind up between 8 core and 12 core.
 
I'm not a computer expert and specs confuse me so where does having 12 cores come into play? What apps benefit from having 12 cores? I'd like to have a fast system that can render large files, faster than what I'm experiencing now. I typically am up against time deadlines when rendering 4k video or a large time-lapse (5000 images).

I guess my question is am I going to get the benefits of 12 core now or down the road?

Appreciate the expertise this forum provides for computer neophytes like myself.
 
The cost versus performance gain doesn't seem worth it with the 12 core. I'd stick with the 6 or 8. Some of your apps do tend to use all cores, but you're likely to see the GPUs leveraged more in the future, especially with FCPX and Premiere.

As for future proofing, that's really an impossibility when buying a computer. I've never been an advocate of buying more than you need at a given time. It just seems like a colossal waste of money, especially considering the premium you're paying for the upper tier options on the Mac Pro. You're much better off just analyzing your current needs, then re-addressing them in the future when you'll have more, better, and cheaper options.

Also, if any of your apps support networked rendering, you could consider a couple lower priced render nodes with the money you would have spent maxing out the Pro. That's a more modular future proof approach to the high cost multi-core chips.
 
handsome pete said:
The cost versus performance gain doesn't seem worth it with the 12 core. I'd stick with the 6 or 8. Some of your apps do tend to use all cores, but you're likely to see the GPUs leveraged more in the future, especially with FCPX and Premiere.

As for future proofing, that's really an impossibility when buying a computer. I've never been an advocate of buying more than you need at a given time. It just seems like a colossal waste of money, especially considering the premium you're paying for the upper tier options on the Mac Pro. You're much better off just analyzing your current needs, then re-addressing them in the future when you'll have more, better, and cheaper options.

Also, if any of your apps support networked rendering, you could consider a couple lower priced render nodes with the money you would have spent maxing out the Pro. That's a more modular future proof approach to the high cost multi-core chips.
Click to expand...

Yea think that's good advice, think I'm going to go for the 8 core and use my 2009 as a render farm for cinema 4D (when my girlfriends not using it). Also now u know we can replace the CPU, in a year or so the 12 core will be much cheaper. :)
 
I went with the 12-core because I've got some very specific cases where it's useful — primarily video encoding jobs that scale nearly perfectly across cores and that can take 20+ hours. Even with the slower Turbo Boost the 12-core should be ~30% faster for this stuff.

In the absence of those use cases I'd have certainly gone for the 8-core instead.
 
I can't speak for all of your apps, but FCPX scales much better where the GPU is concerned. The video cards are a much better deal than the 12-core CPU (which Apple charges a fortune for!).
 
Sinx2oic said:
I'm in a similar position but use after effects and cinema 4d. And I like to game, just can't make my mind up between 8 core and 12 core.
Click to expand...

If you use c4d I'd go with the 12 core!

For heavy after effects use I chose the 8 core for myself since it very often during the actual work just uses 1 core.
 
chfilm said:
If you use c4d I'd go with the 12 core!

For heavy after effects use I chose the 8 core for myself since it very often during the actual work just uses 1 core.
Click to expand...

Yea I know 12 core would be better for Cd4, but as I said I also have my 2009 8 core for network rendering. As far as I know After Effects should use all the cores if you got the ram, but maybe that's more for rendering rather than working. Let's hope Adobe updates the software to work better with the D700. I think I will choose 8 core for money reasons too. As I will also have to buy a drobo or peguses2. Bank balance is about to take a smack! :)
 
Sinx2oic said:
Yea I know 12 core would be better for Cd4, but as I said I also have my 2009 8 core for network rendering. As far as I know After Effects should use all the cores if you got the ram, but maybe that's more for rendering rather than working. Let's hope Adobe updates the software to work better with the D700. I think I will choose 8 core for money reasons too. As I will also have to buy a drobo or peguses2. Bank balance is about to take a smack! :)
Click to expand...

Do yourself a favor and skip the drobo.
I went from a drobo 2nd gen to a 5d whichw as quite an update for sure. The 5d gets read speeds of about 200-250mb/s.
The 1st gen Pegasus I also own gets up to 700mb/s though!
I'm trying to sell my drobo and replace it with a pegasus2 r4.
Shouldn't be too expensive after I sell the slow robot :)
 
First world problems.

Get the 8 core the 12 c is slower in single thread apps.

Also a 4 year old xeon mac pro right now has about 1/3 the speed of a current gen xeon mac pro for single thread. Something to think about if you want to future proof and use a lot of single threaded apps.

It might be better to just buy another one in 3 years time and not spend so much on the current mac pro.

The current mac pro also might not be able to take single panel 4k screens in the future.
 
HD303 said:
I currently use Lightroom, Premier, Bridge and FCPX for my work needs. I'm also into music recording with DSD files. I plan on increasing my 4k video production as well as some hefty time-lapse work.

I believe my needs could be met with a 6 or 8 core system, but I can see where down the road as apps adjust to the nMP the need for a 12 core system could come into play and increase productivity.

Currently in my cart I have:
2.7GHz 12-core
16GB RAM (figure I can buy after market RAM for less money)
1TB Storage
Dual D700's


Thoughts?
Click to expand...

Honestly, no. Never buy more cores than you will use *now*, because in the (near) future, subsequent CPU releases will yield superior performance per core. If you're not using those cores now, they're just being wasted whereas you'd get more use out of faster, fewer cores.
 
I suspect the 6c has more "bang for the buck" than the 8c from a pure GHz point of view.
 
ozbimmer said:
I suspect the 6c has more "bang for the buck" than the 8c from a pure GHz point of view.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the 8 core has more bang than the 6, for sure, but it definitely has a lot more buck too. It's a tough call. It's a steep step up, price wise.

But if someone is wavering between 12 and 8, they've firmly established that the "for the buck" part of the equation is not the primary motivator.
 
Anim said:
As the CPU is upgradable, that future proofs your needs and will be cheaper than forking out the extra Apple charge now.
Click to expand...

This is good advise with one asterisks... do we know if more CPUs are in the pipeline? The 2010 Mac Pro was upgradeable, too, but nothing ever came down the pipeline. After the four year gap in upgrade cycles on this machine, I'm prone to a bit of paranoia about that.

However, it is good advise to probably buy what you need now vs. trying to max out for future-proofing purposes.
 
iPadPublisher said:
This is good advise with one asterisks... do we know if more CPUs are in the pipeline? The 2010 Mac Pro was upgradeable, too, but nothing ever came down the pipeline. After the four year gap in upgrade cycles on this machine, I'm prone to a bit of paranoia about that.

However, it is good advise to probably buy what you need now vs. trying to max out for future-proofing purposes.
Click to expand...

There are no substantial new CPU's to be released for this socket that are not out right now.
 
iPadPublisher said:
This is good advise with one asterisks... do we know if more CPUs are in the pipeline? The 2010 Mac Pro was upgradeable, too, but nothing ever came down the pipeline. After the four year gap in upgrade cycles on this machine, I'm prone to a bit of paranoia about that.

However, it is good advise to probably buy what you need now vs. trying to max out for future-proofing purposes.
Click to expand...

No, he'll be stuck with what's available now. But I think the suggestion was that since 12 cores won't be taken advantage of at this time, then don't waste money now. Instead, get the 12 core later at what should be a cheaper price. Just because it won't be able to be upgraded with the latest and greatest CPU, you'll still see an improvement.

That's assuming he'd want to try and tackle a CPU upgrade to begin with.
 
chfilm said:
Do yourself a favor and skip the drobo.
I went from a drobo 2nd gen to a 5d whichw as quite an update for sure. The 5d gets read speeds of about 200-250mb/s.
The 1st gen Pegasus I also own gets up to 700mb/s though!
I'm trying to sell my drobo and replace it with a pegasus2 r4.
Shouldn't be too expensive after I sell the slow robot :)
Click to expand...

Cool thanks for the advice, 8 core now ordered. I will try get the diskless pegasus2 as that seems much faster. I have 2 crucial m4 solid state drives that I will need to get working too. Don't know how yet.
 
Sinx2oic said:
Cool thanks for the advice, 8 core now ordered. I will try get the diskless pegasus2 as that seems much faster. I have 2 crucial m4 solid state drives that I will need to get working too. Don't know how yet.
Click to expand...

Good decision! Why don't you just get two more of those and put them all together in the pegasus2? That should get you read speeds well above 1gb/s
 
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