Which secondhand Mac Pro for fcpx?

[mattmac74]

Hi,

I have already asked this question in the apple community FCPX forum and someone suggested asking here too.

I have been using my 2013 Macbook Air top spec and max RAM for video editing, which is OK, but rendering is often very slow, when using the canon 5D and gopro camera.

There was a suggestion that and recent mac pro or iMac would provide great performance, What do people here think?


I was wondering about secondhand Mac pro's rather than iMac as I already have a 30" screen.

I would be very grateful for any suggestions of which of the older models would give me better performance than my air??

Also is this a sensible option?

 

[fuchsdh]

Hi,

I have already asked this question in the apple community FCPX forum and someone suggested asking here too.

I have been using my 2013 Macbook Air top spec and max RAM for video editing, which is OK, but rendering is often very slow, when using the canon 5D and gopro camera.

There was a suggestion that and recent mac pro or iMac would provide great performance, What do people here think?


I was wondering about secondhand Mac pro's rather than iMac as I already have a 30" screen.

I would be very grateful for any suggestions of which of the older models would give me better performance than my air??

Also is this a sensible option?

What's your price range? Your MBA theoretically has better single-threaded performance than most Mac Pros out there (I'm not sure what thermal limiting, etc. might do to distort the reality.) But any more recent Mac Pro will have far better multi-threaded performance, and while the recent MBA have OpenCL support a real OpenCL-capable GPU will greatly accelerate FCPX.

 

[CASLondon]

Hi,

I have already asked this question in the apple community FCPX forum and someone suggested asking here too.

I have been using my 2013 Macbook Air top spec and max RAM for video editing, which is OK, but rendering is often very slow, when using the canon 5D and gopro camera.

There was a suggestion that and recent mac pro or iMac would provide great performance, What do people here think?


I was wondering about secondhand Mac pro's rather than iMac as I already have a 30" screen.

I would be very grateful for any suggestions of which of the older models would give me better performance than my air??

Also is this a sensible option?

Yes, its sensible. You are editing on an underpowered platform. That MBA has no discreet GPU.

A new mac pro would be great, if that is expensive for you, get a 2009-2012 mac pro tower, and get it rigged with dual AMD GPUs, a PCI-e boot drive (adapter plus Samsung flash for nMP or adapter plus OWC pro-q drive when it comes out this year). Upgraded CPUs would finish the transformation. Forum is full of discussion of these various tweaks.

Single processor base would be cheaper, dual would give you more rendering power. Either way, lots of higher clock speed CPUs out there to put in.

Since FCX is Open CL and being written to take advantage of dual GPUs, bear that in mind when you shop for upgrades.