12-Core Mac Pro w/ 32GB of RAM and FCPX is S..L...O...W....

This is annoying. I'm trying to cut a feature film on this. On a two week old Mac Pro. 12-Core Mac w/ 32GB of RAM. It's becoming a liability and I'm starting to think I made the wrong choice going with Apple and Final Cut Pro X BOTH. The amount of time this software is adding to MY life timeline is ridiculous. I'm only running FCPX. No other programs. And anyhow, I should have enough RAM to run more than that w/o these problems.
A feature film means I have 400GBs of clips in the Event. This is a real life situation and a editing program needs to be able to handle that. All the media ia on a different internal 7200RPM drive that isn't running the OS.
Renaming a clip in the Event Library is slow. Adding scene and other information to a clip is slow. Processing after importing a clip from tape is slow.
I just imported 10 clips ranging from 30 secs to 3 minutes in length. They are SD from a DVX100 tape. Not even talking HD here. It's supposed to be analyzing in the background but the rainbow ball spinning constantly and allowing me only enough time to click something once before it spins again isn't "processing in the back grond" in my opinion.
I bought the best so that I wouldn't have to deal with garbage like this.
I haven't even started editing yet. I understand this is first gen of a new revamp so it's going to be buggy and crash on occassion. I know what I signed up for. but these are basic tasks. I can't even imagine how performance would be with hi res stuff.
So my question is: What the heck is the deal here? Does Apple check up on these discussions? When will I get a professional level program that actually utilizes the tools I have running under the hood?

Just to update everyone reading this thread. I have begun to cut a teaser trailer for the film (ThereAreNoGoodbyes.com if you're interested!) to premiere at a film festival next week and the editing process has gone smoothly. Editing itself appears to be fine thus far. Although im dealing with a very short project runtime at this point (90 seconds).
At this point it appears the major issues are with importing, transcoding, and analyzing. all headaches and much more time consuming than i have had experience with in the past (on other NLEs). my assumption is maybe it's the "analyzing" thats the main problem here. for my personal curiousity i wanted to see what FCPX came back with in the a/v diagnosis, but if i turned all of those things off on import (just guessing here) perhaps the process would have been much faster.
whatever the case may be it should NOT be advertised as something that can be done in the background until that's an actual fact.
after this trailer is finished (this week) i will start working on the assembly cut of the film which will clock at anywhere from 90 minutes to 2 hours and then ill get a better idea if FCPX can handle what id consider to be a normal-sized project. I'll post back here with my impressions...
side note: i had to do some basic effects in Motion on some footage and that was smooth and painless working within Motion and coming back to FCPX with the footage.

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1066Mhz Memory in a WestMere 12-core Mac Pro

Hello,
Thanks for reading and for your help. I've tried to find an anwser on Google but without success.
I presently have a 2.26Ghz 8-core Mac Pro (Nahelem).
I would like to exchange it with a 2.66Ghz 12-core Mac Pro (Westmere).
I previously bought for my 2.26Ghz 8-core Mac Pro (Nahelem) 32Gb of RAM (Hynix HMT151R7BFR8C-G7). It works fine. And I would like to be able to use the same ram in the 2.66Ghz 12-core Mac Pro (Westmere). Is it possible? Even though the Nahelem uses 1066MHz DDR3 ECC SDRAM and the Westmere uses 1333MHz DDR3 ECC SDRAM.
If it is possible, I understand that I won't be optimal, but I wish to save myself the hassle of selling my old ram, to buy some new. And I will eventually swap the RAM for the right one when prices go down a bit.

Westmere can use 1333 but shouldn't REQUIRE it. But with Apple hardware...?
And there isn't that much difference in performance. I know that was mentioned in one blog/post/article.
Now, as I write this, I am not sure, and definitely not 100%.
It should. I can't see how it would not (DDR3 is very forgiving except when you go above and beyond like faster RAM and over-clocking).
From OWC:
1333MHz and 1066MHz ECC
Model ID: MacPro5,1
1333MHz & 1066MHz ECC Mac Pro
Memory Information
* Up to 64GB of Total Memory
* 4 or 8 Total Slots
* Apple Specified Thermal Sensor
* DDR3 PC3-10600 ECC 1333MHZ or PC-8500 ECC 1066MHz
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/Mac-Pro-Memory#1333-memory
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/1333D3W4M32K/
Crucial -
Q: +What memory goes into my computer, and will a faster speed be backward-compatible?+
A: *DDR3 memory with support for DDR3 PC3-10600 speeds.*
Crucial 12-Core Mid-2010 Mac Pro
First word from OWC and MacPerformanceGuide :
*OWC has confirmed that the 8GB modules do work in the 4/6-core 2010 Mac Pro* > According to OWC, using 3 modules shows a ~ *15% memory bandwidth gain* over 4 modules, so the configurations with a * at right ar the optimal ones. Whether real-world tasks are affected by this small difference remains to be tested, but +in past testing never measured more then 3% hit from using 4 modules instead of 3.+
Mid-2010 Mac Pro DDR3 Memory @ OWC

Huge CPU-spikes on 8-core Mac Pro

Hello,
I just got a new 8-core Mac Pro with 16Gb of RAM. And updated to Logic 9. And Snow Leopard.
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Helsinki, Finland

Has to be Logic. In 10.5.8 I have a sample track with add. drums and omnisphere. It show 2-3 dots on CPU, logic 9 then in snow , spikes all the way to pops cracks and 100% so it's logic not optimized for snow as it works fine in 10.5.8. I daw this a lot in cubase sx and nuendo and the pc. And youbknow us iverclocking types. Ha ha. We learn howto turn off everything for great audio performance so hopefully apple will address this. Could also be the plug in nit snow ready too butbam leaning more toward core audio having a glitch.
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Peace fam.

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No change here either... I have been onto Quark and I have deleted the Preferences folder more times than I need to remember... and even deleted in the home/library/preferences/quark and setup a new "Preferences" (Cap P) in the Application/Quark 8.0 folder and still no improvement. It worked perfect at first... then I went back ands setup my settings.... increased cache levels and various settings... so I'm thinking it could be one of those effecting the situation... I haven't had the time or patience to try since the last time... but the Quark defaults work fine for quitting... well they did the time I did it and testing.... just need to test more... or maybe wait for 10.6.5... it might sort it also...
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Will logic pro x run on my mac mini dual core intel i5 with 4gb of ram and mountain lion ?

hi there guys,
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SkiJumptoes is right. 4GB is not enough to comfortably run Logic X.
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Which memory modules to use for upgrade 8 core Mac Pro

I am planning to upgrade the memory in my new 8 core Mac Pro, I use it for graphics and video editing (FCS2), I am wondering what would be the advantages and differences between getting the 8GB upgrade in 2-pair of 4GB module or 4-pair of 2GB module, I know the price for the first choice is almost double the second.

OK, so according to the http://www.barefeats.com/harper3.html Memory Tests, all slots filled means the fastest speed. So here's my question:
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New Mac Pro - some questions about setup and RAM

After debating between iMac and Mac Pro, I decided on a refurb SINGLE 2.8 quad-core Mac Pro.
Somewhere in these discussions (can't find it now) I thought I saw recommendations to zero out the hard drive and re-install the system when it arrives. Is this necessary?
Also, I plan to use the single processor savings to buy RAM. When I go to the Crucial site, they have a choice of RAM for 4-core or 8-core. Mine is only 4-core, but would I choose the 8-core option to get the correct RAM for 2008 models?
In general, when it comes to buying and installing RAM, should I follow the 8-core directions? Will having a single processor change anything to do with upgrades or expansion?
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Somewhere in these discussions (can't find it now) I thought I saw recommendations to zero out the hard drive and re-install the system when it arrives. Is this necessary?
No, that really isn't necessary. If you were prepping a new bare drive that had never been used or you were installing OS X on a drive that had once been used for Windows, then zeroing the drive is quite appropriate.
All the Mac Pros use the same type of RAM. The Late 2008 models use the faster PC2-6400 800 MHz RAM, but the other specs are the same - ECC, Fully buffered, heat sink. The RAM and installation is the same regardless of cores.
RAM should be installed minimally in matched pairs, optimally in matched quads. The following illustrations show how it should be installed:
Mac Pro memory arrangement photos
Mac Pro Memory Configuration

Need help improving XP SP3 performance on 4-core Mac Pro 2009

I'm running Windows XP SP3 under Boot Camp 3 (Mac OS X v. 10.6.2). Currently, XP is on a second partitioned HD, but it was previously running on a drive all its own with the same problems which are:
When I boot into Windows the sound stutters quite a bit. I updated the Realtek drivers and used the Apple USB device (24" LED speakers) but nothing completely got rid of the static/stuttering.
The real problem comes when running Left 4 Dead. Whenever I get to a new part of any level (where zombies are) the graphics freeze for up to a few seconds and the sound gets glitchy, repeating broken staticky snippets. I don't have other games installed but I get similar performance when watching a YouTube video in Firefox.
Is this normal for Windows on a Mac Pro or do other Mac Pro Boot Campers run Windows smoothly? I have seen YouTube videos of Windows running smoothly on MacBook Pros and iMacs. Just wondering if I'm doing something wrong.
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Thanks in advance for any info or pointers.

I have had success running boot camp on an 8-core Mac Pro from 2009. I have an ATI 4870.
I initially used Windows 7 Beta (32bit) and then RC (64bit) and finally the shipping version (64 bit Professional).
32-Bit crippled Crysis performance for me (only the demo). I was able to run the game with most settings all the way up (excluding Anti-aliasing), at 1920x1080 and it ran fine for about one minute before hitting the hard-drive for about 10 seconds. This thrashing occurred repeatedly and I have up - that problem was resolved when I moved to 64bit Windows.
Other games I have played with no trouble are The Orange Box & Borderlands, each with maxed resolution and settings.
Optical audio and the front headphones work fine for me - though the 4 conductor cord does not recognize the microphone (from an iPhone headset) in Windows, which gets me down as it would be nice to audio-chat in some games.
Try these thing in this order if you can, and have not already:
Patch the game (though if this is happening in Firefox as well, it seems like an OS problem)
Update directX (I really have no clue here, I assume Windows does this automatically?)
Try demos of other games
Upgrade the OS to 64bit (Especially if you have over 3GB of ram
Go from XP to 7 (I have had no trouble with Windows 7 on my machine)
Try a DVI monitor (I am using a 21" Westinghouse, have never connected an Apple display)
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Owen

New 8 Core Mac Pro Question

What will the 8 Core Mac Pro do for Aperture? I know you need 4 gig of ram and the ATI video card. I am just curious about what processor to purchase.
I find that Exporting images from a wedding of 800 or so images takes about 2.5 hours on my G5 Dual 1.8 with 3 gigs of ram. I would really like to speed up the Export process!
I will also be using Photoshop CS3 when it ships. Will Actions that I have written run faster on the 8 Core Machine?
I just need some buying advice.
Kevin Hawkins

How much Aperture alone sees today is not so much the point as is what happens with real world performance. Real world it is not just about the theoretical limit of what Aperture sees; apps and the OS/RAM/GPU/CPUs all work together, and folks typically do have more than one app open at a time. My expectation is that although certainly fully functional with 4 GB, the kind of users that run Aperture on a MP will find that greater than 4 GB of RAM is clearly beneficial.
Anecdotal reports also seem to indicate that Mac Pros have an inherent need for more RAM than previous boxes needed.
Also OS 10.5/Leopard is due soon enough that we should be planning new box configurations based on our expectations of what impact Leopard and Aperture v2 will have on RAM utilization. My strong opinion is that we will be able to take advantage of more RAM as 2007/2008 play out.
In any event 4 or 5 (1 Apple plus 4 third party) GB of RAM is an excellent place to start, and RAM always gets cheaper and is easy to retrofit later. IMO we should buy only 2 GB sized DIMMs to facilitate maximum future expansion.
-Allen Wicks

12 core Mac Pro does not improve render time over iMac quad core

I'm rendering the same composition independently on two computers and they are basically rendering at the same rate, which is slightly better than 1 frame per second.
The project settings and preferences are identical in each instance (with the exception of memory and multiprocessing, which I have experimented with ad nauseum). The composition includes no motion blur, no effects, just a couple of layers of chroma keyed .mov files (using keylight 2.0) and some still images. Neither machine is running any other applications, except occasionally Google Chrome, which seems to have no effect on performance.
Both systems are running the latest version of After Effects CC (2014) and using the Classic 3D renderer.
System 1 MAC PRO:
Mac Pro 12 core 2.7 GHz Intel Xeon E5
dual AMD FirePro 500D 3072 MB GPUs
32 GB RAM
OS X 10.9.4
System 2 iMAC:
iMac quad core 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5
AMD Radeon HD 6750M 512 MB GPU
8 GB RAM
OS X 10.9.3
As you can see, system 1 is vastly more powerful, and yet no combination of memory/multiprocessing settings can get the system to render faster than system 2.
It doesn't seem to matter how much or little RAM I reserve for other applications (I have settled on 4 GB), or the number of CPUs I reserve for After Effects. The one setting that has improved performance is turning OFF render multiple frames. And even then it only brings the performance of the Mac Pro up to par with the iMac. I have cleared my cache, rebooted the computer, and read everything I can find online regarding the optimization of render settings.
Here's a comparison of the respective CPU Loads:
iMac
Mac Pro
With such a low CPU load, After Effects is obviously not utilizing the resources available to it on the Mac Pro. What a waste.
Can anyone help?

There's plenty of debate about the new Mac Pro vs a kitted out iMac. Benchmarks show that some iMac After Effects processing can actually be faster than on a Mac Pro, depending on the content and some other factors. If you're using software that has been optimised for the Mac Pro's GPU-centric architecture, like Final Cut Pro X, you will see great benefits.
mac pro vs imac
In my own facility recently we opted out of purchasing Mac Pros this year, and bought top-end iMacs instead. The benefit to cost ratio simply didn't make sense for us right now. Mac Pros are awesome machines, but a significant component of their cost is the dual GPUs, which are simply no benefit to After Effects.
Reports say that the After Effects engineers are working on a major revamp of the After Effects processing system, so I'm betting you will realise far greater benefits from your Mac pro in coming AE versions. For now, you may continue to see performance that is not spectacularly better than a souped-up iMac, depending on the type of processing involved.
I've seen a few benchmarks that suggest the 8 core systems give better bang-for-buck than the 12 cores. Try reducing your processors to 8 in After Effects and see if it makes a difference. With 8 cores, allocate 3GB of RAM per core to leave some RAM for the OS.

Added ram to mac pro, get ecc memory error and 4mem/9/40000006: B:0 C:0 R:0

I recently purchased a 2.8 8 core Mac pro (early '08 model). It came shipped with 2gigs of ram (one gig on riser card a, one gig on riser b).
I purchased 2 1gig sticks from ramjet, i followed a apple tutorial and installed the 2 original sticks in riser card A (slots 1 and 2), and the 2 new Ramjet sticks in riser card B (slots 1 and 2) for a total of 4gigs.
When I powered on the computer everything was fine, clicked the black apple logo to view "about this mac" and the 4gigs total memory showed up. However when i clicked "more info" then "memory"... it showed the status on one of the new ramjet sticks as "ecc error"
I rebooted the computer and the error message was gone, all sticks showed a status of "ok"
a few days went by and i was constantly checking the system profiler and the status would always show the sticks as "ok" and the computer acts totally normal, i run pro tools, logic pro, photoshop and it would run flawlessly.
The fact it showed an error a few days prior was still bugging me so i decided to call the applecare protection and consult with them... they said to remove and re-install the memory, reboot holding down the "option + command + R + P" to reset memory, then to reboot again holding down the "D" to do a Apple hardware Test.
the first test showed pass, i checked the extended test and that showed a 4mem/9/40000006: B:0 C:0 R:0 error, the second and 3rd tests froze and i had to push the power button to reboot.
I contacted Applecare once again and they said that since my computer was not acting funny nor freezing during apps or showing any errors that it should be fine, as long as the status said "ok" in system profiler and all four gigs registered in "about this mac" that no harm is going to happen.
when i asked what that long error code was she said it did not come up in her computer but she thinks its because its not official apple memory.
I tried searching online in forums to solve this but i cant find anything on that specific error code.
sorry for the long post but i wanted to be as detailed as possible to get the best advice
thanks and any help would be much appreciated.
and by the way i did contact ramjet and they are willing to replace my memory but there advice was also not to worry that its only giving that error due to the memory not being "official" apple memory, but if it registers and the computer acts totally normal to just leave it be.
thanks again,
David
Message was edited by: priv510
Message was edited by: priv510

thanks for the reply Kappy,
yes they have heat sinks and ramjet states they are "apple grade"
i downloaded the istat widget (not sure how accurate that is) and it says the apple sticks on A run at 32 degrees and the ones on B run at 31 degrees
the comp is practically brand new and when i opened it for the ram install it still looked brand new (no dust) its only a few weeks old.
I am going to return the sticks for sure to be safe but where im lost is.... yes it did show ecc error once, never again, its been a week now still no ecc error. I ran tech tool deluxe and everything passes, i ran "Rember memory test" and it passes, system profiler registers all 4 gigs and shows status as ok, computer acts totally normal? but the apple hardware test fails i guess im lost to why the comp says the ram is ok nd passes most tests just not the AHT test.
Thanks for your help i hope the new sticks dont show any error
David
O and I forgot to mention i called applecare again and requested a different agent to help me and he said Ecc stands for error correcting? so if it came up once and not again it did what it was suppose to do... corrected itself (now that sounds like more b.s to me but i have no idea about computer stuff )
Message was edited by: priv510

8 Core Mac Pro only using 40% of its power? ouch.

Hi there
I have purchased a top of the line 8 Core Mac Pro with 10GB RAM to do video conversion tasks, among other things.
Right now, i'm importing a m4v file into iMovie, and i've opened up Activity Monitor, and it stays around the 40% mark. The import says it will take approximately 9 minutes.
The same conversion was then tested on an iMac and took only a tiny bit longer with the % bars up much higher.
What gives?
Is there a way I can make all the processors FOCUS on a specific task to complete it much faster (without setting up xGrid since most apps aren't xgrid compatible)
One thing I have tried, I purchased a copy of VisualHub and duplicated the application about 5 times, and gave it 5 different tasks. It used up 100% sure enough, but what if I have just one biiig task?
Otherwise I could have saved myself the extra $6000 and bought an imac...

Michael Blach wrote:
One thing I have tried, I purchased a copy of VisualHub and duplicated the application about 5 times, and gave it 5 different tasks. It used up 100% sure enough, but what if I have just one biiig task?
There's a saying: Nine women can't make a baby in one month. If a task is not practical to be broken up, it can't be broken up. Or at least until programmers rearrange pipelines so that it can. Snow Leopard is no guarantee of anything. It will take Apple to provide good Snow Leopard frameworks for multitasking in the OS, and it will take application programmers to compartmentalize pipelines so that all processes that can be broken up, are. It will take both parties. Either alone won't do it. And some processes might still not be able to be broken up (like making a baby).
Even at that point, to expand on what Scott said, you have to prove that the CPU is the bottleneck. That is isn't because the disks can't feed data fast enough, or write the computed data back fast enough, or that it isn't because the speed of the bus to RAM can't keep up, etc. There is a huge myth that CPU is the only measure of performance, but performance has multiple dependencies like CPU speed, RAM/bus speed, and disk speed. If a program cares about the CPU most, like 3D or math apps, then adding more CPUs scales performance effectively. If a program needs to read/write data from/to disk constantly, or depends on other components for performance, the CPU may spend a lot of time waiting for those other components.
Is there a way I can make all the processors FOCUS on a specific task to complete it much faster (without setting up xGrid since most apps aren't xgrid compatible)
Only if the process can be broken down and the processing pipelines support it. Otherwise, you just have CPUs "focusing on" waiting for the other system components to deliver stuff it can work on.
There are some apps that can exploit 8 cores, After Effects is one that can do it for video. I do not use that often but my (possibly out of date) understanding is that it can take individual independent lossless frames and send them to different cores or machines for processing, but that is far different than what you would do with Visual Hub or iMovie which is doing a lot of decompressing/compressing using lossy codecs that look across many frames in time. That fact may prevent some degree of breaking up the task, if the codec needs to see forward and back in the same file to process a single frame instead of being able to hand off individual frames to other CPUs.
Don't take the details of last paragraph as gospel, I'm just trying to convey the idea.

CPU v. GPU in 12 core Mac Pro

I think I know the answer to this question but I wanted to ask around to make sure I wasn't missing the obvious.
Looking at the Compressor4 specs I see that "...Distributed encoding uses available capacity in other cores and other computers to make encoding go faster..." This would imply that running Compressor4 on a couple of 12 core Mac Pros would give you 24 cores worth of crunch. So far, so good.
But then in the Minimum System Requirements I see "...OpenCL-capable graphics card or Intel HD Graphics 3000 or later..." which would imply that it uses the GPU, not the CPU to crunch on.
Now I think where I'm getting confused is display v. crunch. If I want to run the Mac Pros headless as a renderfarm then Compressor4 will use the CPU cores to crunch on. However the moment I want to attach a monitor and display what I'm encoding I'll need a nice beefy graphics card that is OpenCL compatable.
Right?
So I'm right in thinking that in a headless configuration the graphics card is of little to no importance and adding more of them won't help in the slightest?
Right?
The last thing I'm curious about is RAM. Is there going to be a noticable difference between a machine with 8GB RAM and a machine with 24GB RAM? How about breaking the bank and throwing 64GB?
Thanks for your time.

There's really no good answer to this because different codec require different resources. Video Codec A being transformed into Video Codec B will always depend on the resources needed for A or B. H.264 encoding seems to now to benefit from both the GPU and CPU. However, ProRes decoding is going to become bottlenecked by the hard drive speed on a 12 core machine. To be on the safe side, I would get an internal SSD drive and use that for encoding and decoding content.

Eight Core Mac Pro

Just a post in case someone wants to know; Logic 8 with the new Mac Pro 8 core machines rocks. I got the stock 2.8GHZ machine (2GB RAM). Screen redraws and meters are smooth, no studders or core overloads. Upgrading from dual 2Ghz G5. Just have to replace my UAD-1 cards now - bummer...
Oh yeah, after the migration from the old Mac, the Apogee ensemble worked straight away without reinstalling the drivers, etc.
Paul

Good luck with those bigger projects, Paul. I just posted this message on the UAudio forum. I sure hope I'm missing something simple because this is completely unacceptable:
So I decided to upgrade my old dual 2.5GHz G5 with the dreaded AMD-8131 PCI chipset to one of the shiny new 8-core Mac Pros that were announced last week. Of course, this meant that I also had to upgrade my 2 UAD-1 cards to UAD-1e cards. The cards are installed in slots 3 & 4 - the PCI Express 2.0 slot is open. I have a project with the following plugin instance counts:
4 Cambridge
5 SPL Transient Designer
1 Pultec Pro
1 Precision Maximizer
Would anyone have any idea why I would receive the "One or more Powered Plug-Ins have been disabled. CPU load limit exceeded" when opening the project on the new Mac Pro but not on the old G5? Both computers have 2GB ram. The old computer was running Tiger but the new one is running Leopard. I'm using Logic 8.0.1.
The thing is, all the plugins appear to be loading. If I unload the Precision Maximizer, the reload it, I get the error message as soon as I select a preset. Again, in this case, the plugin seems to be loading.

12-Core Mac Pro w/ 32GB of RAM and FCPX is S..L...O...W....

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