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PC to Mac Pro, please HELP!

D

drakester

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 14, 2011
6
0
Been a PC guy forever. Just got my first Mac and its the Mac Pro

Stats:
2 x 2.4 Quad Core Intel Xeon
8GB 1066 DDR3

I also have an ASUS desktop PC with an i7 and 8GB of RAM

I work in Abobe Master Suite CS5 and do my editing in Premiere. I havent done a head to head test but it clearly seems like my PC renders faster. Usually i can play a simple 2 layer timeline back at high res on my PC but when i try the same file on the mac i have to drop it to 1/2 res to playback smoothly in premiere.

I really thought when i dropped $3600 it was going to blow me away but as of right now my $1200 PC appears to be just as fast if not faster when it comes to editing video with Adobe CS5

Any suggestions!?!

Thanks!
 
Considering the complexity of what you are asking. You have to post clock speeds for any accurate assessment. What speed is the PC i7? What type of video card? Is the mercury engine working on the PC? The 2.4GHz is one of the slowest Mac Pro's out there unless your app is super multi threaded.
 
Cost is irrelevant, what are the speeds for the CPU and RAM on both setups? How about the video cards and HD platter speeds?
 
sorry, the PC is an i7 920 @ 2.67ghz
and while looking it has 9gb of RAM
Video Card NVidia GTX260
Not sure on the hard drive but i think its 7200
I got it almost a year ago.

The Mac has:
dual ATI Radeon HD 5770s
 
Only reason i mentioned cost was due to talking to other Mac owners and even the people at the Mac store they justified the cost by making it appear that it would be faster at video editing than my PC.

Neither has the ability to run the Mercury playback... guess neither have the proper video card for that.
 
It should be doing faster render times on the MacPro as its 8 core vs quadcore on the PC. Well, it seems like speed wise ( 2.4Ghz vs 2.66Ghz ) your pretty close so should not be too much of a difference there.

The only thing I can think of is your software may not be designed for multiple cores. Try running "Cinebench" benchmark on both computers and compare the results. Cinebench can utilize multiple cores.

Its also a better way to compare both through a standardized testing like a benchmark.

Edit: Might be Premiere software as its sluggish as well on my 8 core MacPro but perfectly fine using same movie files in imovie. Premiere was originally a PC software that was crossed over to the Mac platform.

IMO software converted to other platforms often have problems like this ( Like itunes on a PC, Wirecast on PC platform is buggy on PC but runs quite well on Mac from which it was originally developed for. ) So this might have something to do with this.

So I see this as a third party software issue rather then a PC vs MAC issue.
 
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I've always found in recent years that the PC was far superior to the Mac in terms of video editing/processing. What you're finding is certainly not an anomaly. If someone was going to do video editing I would absolutely recommend a PC over a Mac, unless they NEEDED FCP.
 
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TennisandMusic said:
I've always found in recent years that the PC was far superior to the Mac in terms of video editing/processing. What you're finding is certainly not an anomaly. If someone was going to do video editing I would absolutely recommend a PC over a Mac, unless they NEEDED FCP.
Click to expand...

I cannot agree with that. I go from PC to Mac almost everyday, switching between Avid (on both platforms) and Final Cut Pro. The Macs consistently outperform the PCs, especially versus Windows XP/Vista.
Now for this particular head-to-head I can imagine Premiere is better optimised under Windows, and Adobe has made headway compared to the competition when editing recent HD codecs like those coming out of the Canon 5d or Sony XDCAM EX.
 
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drakester said:
Been a PC guy forever. Just got my first Mac and its the Mac Pro

Stats:
2 x 2.4 Quad Core Intel Xeon
8GB 1066 DDR3

I also have an ASUS desktop PC with an i7 and 8GB of RAM

I work in Abobe Master Suite CS5 and do my editing in Premiere. I havent done a head to head test but it clearly seems like my PC renders faster. Usually i can play a simple 2 layer timeline back at high res on my PC but when i try the same file on the mac i have to drop it to 1/2 res to playback smoothly in premiere.

I really thought when i dropped $3600 it was going to blow me away but as of right now my $1200 PC appears to be just as fast if not faster when it comes to editing video with Adobe CS5

Any suggestions!?!

Thanks!
Click to expand...

What is your source material ? What codecs are you editing ?
 
initialsBB said:
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What is your source material ? What codecs are you editing ?
Click to expand...

Why does that matter? It's the exact same program, just on different platforms...

OP, I gotta tell you, at the moment I'm happy that I didn't cross over yet. I'd been haning around an editor friend of mine running AE on his 8core pro and was all "awww... need have". But I never really got around to buying one.
So instead, I installed CS5 on my own quad pc and guess what, I was very impressed how it handled it. I really runs smooth and the feel I got is that it is atleast on par with my mates 8core.

So while I still want to make a cross over, I will postpone it till I'm 100% sure that a mac will out perform a pc for the same price.
 
This is why i went for the 2.93 quad. I do mostly CS5 and a little Maya. Couldn't have afforded the 2.66 octo even if i wanted to.

More and more people keep thinking more cores is always better. But its not always true.

To the OP... For CS5 you need a fast clock speed (your PC is faster), Lots of RAM, and fast data access (so SSD boot drive and RAID setup for data maybe).

We dont even know if CS6 will utilise all your 8 Cores yet.
 
thanks for the replies guys.
The footage is straight out of my Canon 60D at 1080p but i dont think that matters as im using the same footage on both with the same software on both.

Soooooo.... now that i see the system i got for video editing isnt that great for video editing, what programs will i see performance increase from over my PC? Please help me feel better about this $3600 purchase. Lie to me, tell me Microsoft Word is faster, something. lol

If i got new video cards that will enable Mercury Playback in CS5 that should speed things up a bit right?
 
If you just bought it you can swap it out for a machine that better suits your needs.

The 3.2 quad or 3.3 6-core should be quite an improvement for about the same money. Why keep something that doesn't perform as you expected?

Apple will happily sell it as a refurb. :)
 
I have had it for about 3 months now but JUST recently started doing editing with it. Its main purpose so far has been running Pro Presenter at my church. Now we are starting to edit video on it and im seeing that its not up to par.

Whats Apple's return policy? 30 Days i assume, maybe less since its a computer, 14?
 
Yeah I believe 30 days. However it won't hurt to call or visit Apple and tell them your case. Maybe they will just charge you a nominal restocking fee. In my experience they would rather have a happy customer.
 
i will call my rep, as it was done through the business department.
wont hurt to try.

Thanks!
 
Premiere was originally a PC software that was crossed over to the Mac platform.
Click to expand...

False. Premiere actually originated on the Mac in 1991. A PC version didn't appear until two years later. But there was about a five year period (after Version 6.5 until the release of CS3) where it was a Windows-only product. What you can say though is that Premiere Pro (a re-brand and overhaul of the software, starting with Version 7.0) originated on Windows and that would be more accurate. ;)

You will see a performance increase with Final Cut Pro. That will utilise all 8 cores.
Click to expand...

Not entirely true. FCP itself isn't very multithreaded and will rarely use beyond 2 CPU cores at any one time, with the exception being timeline renders. Its bundled Compressor application will however utilize all 8 cores by using a virtual QMaster cluster (which basically tricks Compressor into running multiple instances of itself in the background) doing encoding.


OP:

Are you also running CS5 on the Mac (and the 64-bit versions of the applications)? I don't think you ever made that distinction. There's a lot of factors involved with optimizing performance in CS5 apps like Premiere Pro and After Effects.
 
I think the only supported Pro cards for mercury playback are Nvidia stuff:

GTX 285 Only one under $500.00
Quadro Stuff
Most likely ATI Fire series (Custom Drivers)

When I asked the Adobe Premier team if/when they were going to support the ATI cards in the new 2010 Macs they laughed, sort of and said Apple doesn't give them the API's for this to happen. Much like Flash acceleration, they can only hook into 9400, 9600 and GTX 285.
If you use Premier, a PC is a way better investment.
This info is months old though maybe something has changed.
 
drakester said:
sorry, the PC is an i7 920 @ 2.67ghz
and while looking it has 9gb of RAM
Video Card NVidia GTX260
Not sure on the hard drive but i think its 7200
I got it almost a year ago.

The Mac has:
dual ATI Radeon HD 5770s
Click to expand...

Premiere is optimized for NVidia cards, but not ATI cards. Specifically real time playback.

That's your problem right there...

derbothaus said:
When I asked the Adobe Premier team if/when they were going to support the ATI cards in the new 2010 Macs they laughed, sort of and said Apple doesn't give them the API's for this to happen. Much like Flash acceleration, they can only hook into 9400, 9600 and GTX 285.
If you use Premier, a PC is a way better investment.
This info is months old though maybe something has changed.
Click to expand...

This is totally, %100 incorrect. The reason they only work on NVidia cards is because they use CUDA (and it's probable that NVidia paid them money to do so.) CUDA only works on NVidia hardware, Apple supplies OpenCL as an alternative that works on both cards, including the 5770 and the 5870.

I had a conversation with several engineers from the Premiere team about this feature while it was in beta. They actually demoed it on a Mac running with NVidia hardware, so if you have an NVidia card on a Mac, it will work. If you have an ATI card on Windows, you'll have the same problem.

More info:
http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/performance/

Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 requires a 64-bit operating system and works hand-in-hand with NVIDIA® CUDA™ technology. The Mercury Playback Engine uses NVIDIA GPU cards to provide a GPU-accelerated 32-bit color pipeline, and most popular effects have been rewritten to run on it — for example, effects like color correction, the Ultra keyer, and motion control all run in real time.
Click to expand...

No need to return it. Your old machine is using Mercury Playback, and your new one isn't. You just need to get an NVidia card.
 
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goMac said:
This is totally, %100 incorrect.
Click to expand...

I wasn't totally wrong. The gist is that Nvidia works, ATI does not. Adobe blames Apple for the lack of other card support. Apple feigns ignorance. That is not 100% wrong. But I know how much you guys like hearing yourselves say that after a post. Whether it is CUDA or OpenCL does not matter. The performance is not there as it is with the PC. Maybe Adobe said those things as a brush off. They should have said that they are too lazy to compile for OpenCL and CUDA.
 
derbothaus said:
I wasn't totally wrong. The gist is that Nvidia works, ATI does not. Adobe blames Apple for the lack of other card support. Apple feigns ignorance. That is not 100% wrong. But I know how much you guys like hearing yourselves say that after a post. Whether it is CUDA or OpenCL does not matter. The performance is not there as it is with the PC. Maybe Adobe said those things as a brush off. They should have said that they are too lazy to compile for OpenCL and CUDA.
Click to expand...

CUDA is made by NVidia and is only for NVidia cards by their decision. NVidia writes the CUDA drivers. It is a proprietary NVidia technology specifically designed not to work with ATI cards.

This has nothing to do with Apple at all. Nothing.

Mercury Engine also will not work on an ATI card on Windows. Again, nothing to do with Apple.

Whoever you are talking to at Adobe is not feeding you correct information. I've worked extensively with CS5 on a developer level.

I've seen a Mac playback 10 1080p streams simultaneously on Mercury. The Mac is not slow. It's Adobe not supporting OpenCL.

(Also, having worked with ATI hardware running Premiere on Windows, I can verify the same slow speeds.)
 
I guess I leaned toward something in the Apple driver stack as Adobe only supports CUDA on a couple cards in OS X. But quite a few Windows cards are supported that have Mac equivalents that are not supported. Given Nvidia preference for bundled drivers, why so few supported OS X cards when clearly CUDA works on them in Win? At that point I injected Apple as they control final driver packaging and testing. Also, thanks for the info:)
 
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