Mac Pro 5,1 vs Macbook Pro 11,5 vs...

[MacScout]

Hey everyone,

I am looking to potentially upgrade hardware for media production use (Final Cut, Premier, Photoshop (RAW photos), Illustrator + occasional gaming)

I currently own a Macbook Pro 11,5 + 2.8ghz i7 + 16gb 1600 MHz DDR3 + AMD Radeon R9 M370X 2GB

I am considering one of the following options.....

1. Mac Pro 5,1 + 3.46ghz 12 core + 128gb 1333 MHz DDR3 + GTX 970 4gb GPU + RAID 0 SSD
2. Hackintosh + Intel i& 6700k 4ghz + 64gb DDR4 + GTX 970 + RAID 0 SSD
3. Getting an Akitio Thunder2 or Bizon Box 2 with a GTX 970 and plugging it into my Macbook Pro 11,5

Any input on my best option for media production?

The new Mac Pro 6,1 is just too much money to justify at this time and lacking in the expandability I need.
It seems with the old Mac Pro and the Hackintosh, I will not be able to use Thunderbolt, which isn't a great loss (I only have 1 thunderbolt drive)

Does anyone have any benchmarks or experience to adequately compare these options?

Thanks!

 

[PowerMike G5]

I have the exact same MacBook Pro as yours and also a fully spec'd out Mac Pro 5,1. The Mac Pro really flies with 4K video editing and rendering and does things a good deal faster than my laptop... albeit it has been upgraded quite a bit.

I don't know how much you need 128GB of RAM, but you could lower that and take some of the money towards a M.2 PCIe boot/scratch drive solution, which I think you may gain more from. Also I've used the GTX 980 in Premier for the last year and a half before moving over to the Titan X. The 980 is great option as well and runs off the 2 internal power ports.

 

[MacScout]

The ram was my other thought. Would I need 128gb ram, or would 64gb be enough? (Would any application really demand that much?)

RE: SSD:
Are you refering to something like this?
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/PCIe/OWC/Mercury_Accelsior/RAID

If so, could two of them be raided together to get faster speeds than 830 mb/s?
( I really like the Appx. 1300mb/s write/1600 mb/s read I am getting from the SSD in my Macbook Pro)

RE: GPU
I read that the GTX 980 Ti needed an external power source, no?

 

[PowerMike G5]

If you're asking if you need that much RAM, you probably don't

I use 48GB RAM and never ran out and I work mainly with 4K video footage.

You can use the Accelsior, but there are better options. I use the Samsung SM951 M.2 SSD (this is actually the same one used in our laptops I believe). So you can maintain the same speed. You can get one as a boot drive and another as a scratch drive and you can benefit having those speeds on different drives. The beauty of the tower upgradeability. I have 4 of these SSDs in my Mac Pro and used to have one as my boot and the other 3 in RAID 0 and hit 4000MB R/W. Now I use them all as separate drives (boot, scratch render, media cache, and export) and have found the speed far better that way.

The GTX 980 can run on internal power. The 980 Ti runs close to limit, but there are plenty folks who have run it on internal power with no issue (I do the same with the Titan X). That's a decision you would have to make.