GarageBand performance on Mac Pro

Yesterday when I was composing a beautiful song I had a couple of instruments playing at the same time. At the bottom of the screen I see the notes of the score I´m composing as they are played. While this is nevertheless surprising, I am actually curious about how this would look on a Mac Pro.
As soon as the song audio produces just a little bit of work for the CPU, the screen refresh goes down from perfect timing to one second chokes on my machine as the same time as CPU load goes beyond 110 %. Activity monitor show there are about 20 threads in GarageBand. The sound is perfect. What happens if, say one buys a 2x2.0 GHz Mac Pro(4 cores totally)? The actual CPU frequency will be lower, but would the display respond better? That is: Is GarageBand a program that handles multiple threads well or does one have to buy a Mac Pro with higher CPU frequency?
(I´m using a 30" Apple Cinema HD Display)

pink_snow wrote:
The hatter wrote:
Can you imagine a Mac Pro not handing it without breaking into a sweat? I can't.
What does this sentence mean? Please simplify!
I'm positive he worded that incorrectly. "What he meant to say is "Can you imagine a Mac Pro that couldn't handle it without breaking a sweat?" Basically a Mac Pro is designed to go the distance with applicaitons like this, given you've configured the machines with enough memory and storage resources.

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How is the performance of Mac Pro if i use it as host for windows and linux virtual machines.

How is the performance of Mac Pro if i use it as host for windows and linux virtual machines.
I am planning to buy a high performance PC to run my Windows and Linux servers as vitrual machines for my testing purposes.
Initially i planned to build my own computer with recommended configurations but considering space constaints and cooling factors i think Mac Pro can be a choice. But need some inputs if Mac pro (Intel Xeon E5, 12 GB RAM) is good for running virtual Machines.

You could even run Windows natively and still run your VM servers.
I have seen reports and such on MacRumors and elsewhere - run Windows natively as well as VMs (can also do testing and run Mavericks in a VM under Mavericks)
The fast internal PCIe-SSD, plus 6 or 8 cores, and 32-64GB RAM. Of course for $5,000 for 8-core, some Thunderbolt storage and 32GB/64GB RAM you can buy some serious hardware.

In need of a de-esser that works in GarageBand on a Mac Pro...

Hey all!
I upgraded to a Mac Pro about a month ago and have been loving it.
But the free de-esser I used to use for vocals recorded into GarageBand (via my condenser mic), "spitfish," has no Intel version and never will. I've scoured the web and come up with no replacement that costs less than several hundreds of dollars (as part of a package).
So my question is simple:
How can I get a de-esser into GarageBand 3 on an Intel Mac? I'm willing to pay, but not for a whole package I don't need.
Thanks!

Yeah, I've known about that. I mean, I could use Apple's multiband EQ if I wanted to do it that way. But I'd rather use a full-out de-esser.
Any other ideas?

Strange CPU Performance issue Mac Pro, Logic 7.2.3......

Hi there,
I am experiencing a strange issue with Logic 7.2.3 and my Mac Pro.
I am running about 70 tracks in a tune I'm writing, with a lot of the EQ and dynamics processed on a Liquid Mix, but am experiencing a lot of CPU spikes, and drop outs in logic.
The System Performance meters are showing that one of the CPU cores is at full capacity, whilst the Activity Monitor is showing a total usage of about 40%.
http://www.ephexis.co.uk/images/cpu-grab.jpg
I have tried every combination of settings in the audio preferences, but cannot seems to get this track to play properly.
With 71 tracks, this machine is currently LESS powerful than the G5 that I have been working on until purchasing the Mac Pro.
I there anything else I can try? Are there any other means of controlling buffer size?
I have a suspicion that this may have something to do with the Plugin Delay Compensation set to 'All' - But without doing this, I cannot use the DSP effects of the liquid mix to work on a Bus! Very frustrating.
Many thanks for the help, any ideas at would be deeply appreciated,
Adam Ephexis
Mac Pro 2.66, 2GB, 1.5TB -=- MacBook Pro 2.16, 1GB, 100GB Mac OS X (10.4.8) Liquid Mix, Fireface 800, Apogee MiniDAC, Creamware A16 Ultra

Great!
Thanks for the tips guys.
I have tried to find an offending loop or part in the sequence, but cannot find anything at all thats causing the issue.
My suspiscion is that using the focusrite Liquid mix on a part, that is in turn going into a delay compensated bus, which has another Liquid mix plugin on it, is causing the issues. I use the total mix software in the fireface to perform the summing of the busses, which I think in turn may be causing the PDC to glitch a bit more.
Which is a bit annoying, as the mix in this tune is my best yet!
So I will attempt to remove the liquid mixes that are running in series in a chain, and see if thats the problem, but if that fails, time to re-format again!
I'll let you know how I get on in the next couple of days!
Thanks again,
Adam
Mac Pro 2.66, 2GB, 1.5TB -=- MacBook Pro 2.16, 1GB, 100GB Mac OS X (10.4.8) Logic 7.2.3 - Fireface 800, Focusrite Liquid Mix, Apogee MiniDAC, Creamware A16 Ultra

CS2 performance on Mac Pro vs G4 based computers

I'm currently using a Powerbook G4 1.5 with 512mb. I am having a hard time using Photoshop because I've been working with really high resolution scans lately. I'm looking for someone who has both a Powerbook and a Mac Pro 2.66ghz, I would like to know whether or not moving up to a Mac Pro would speed things up for me since i'm on a G4. I know that the Mac Pro runs Adobe CS2 slower than the G5, but the G4 is a much slower processor than the G5 and my Powerbook has a 4200rpm drive. Any input would be greatly appreciated, I'm off to an Apple store for more info from a Genius, but I'd like some input from someone who uses both on a regular basis or something like that.
Thanks

My somewhat educated guess is that photoshop on the MacPro will be faster. The much faster cpu speed will offset the performance penalty of Rosetta.
I'd recommend at least 2gig but more like 4 gig, as that seems to be the sweet spot for photshop running on intel macs.
Take a look at these Benchmarks Actually the whole article is very informative.
Mike

OT: PS2 performance on Mac Pro

I'm sick and tired of waiting for the mythical x1900XT G5 PCI-e edition, and I'm considering a Mac Pro with that card and 3 GB of RAM. I know from reports here that it should be quite fast with Aperture, but what I'm concerned about is Photoshop performance. I do most of my editing in PS2 (using the open in external editor command). The image files start out at 45 MB or so, and are often at 150 MB by the time I save them again.
My current set-up is a dual-core G5 2.0Ghz with 2.5 GB RAM and Raptor 10k RPM boot drive, using a second 400 GB HD as a scratch disk in PS2. I'm wondering how PS2 performance with a 2.66 MP + 1900XT + 3 GB of RAM would compare in "real world" usage with my current set-up.
My other option would be to get a ridiculously priced 7800GT for $800 and bump up RAM to 4 GB on my G5. But I figure I can sell the G5 for $1800 or so, and for a few hundred bucks more get a MP instead of sinking money into an older machine.
What do you think?

Sell the G5 and buy a MP. At this time of year it
often makes sense to wait for MacExpo SF January 8,
because new choices will be available (almost
assuredly quad cores) and prices of today's best
boxes will lower.
Hmmm... tricky. The MP boxes will be cheaper, but the resale value on my G5 will be lower too. I wonder if there's an advantage either way.

FCP Performance on Mac Pro

Hi! After 3 months of pushing, I finally got a Mac Pro 2.8ghz 8-core with Final Cut Studio 2. I just got the workstation setup and Final Cut Studio installed, all the updates are completed. Now I am getting down into some light training with some DV footage I have to familiarize myself with the capabilities of this system. So far I have not been impressed. I imported 2 30-sec DV clips, dropped them into the sequence with crossfades, and when I playback, I hear 2 seconds of audio followed by beeps, and at the point where the clips are supposed to cross-dissolve the playback stops with a warning that frames have been dropped. I had better performance with iMovie on my G4. I know that FCP is a bigger beast but having worked with Avid MC on a PowerMac 9600 I am expecting more out of this setup. What in the world could I be doing wrong?

LD Bear old wrote:
When I open the .dv clip in Quicktime it shows format: DV, 720x480 (640x480), Millions, Stereo, 48.000 kHz. What else should I check?
Ahh, I think I see your issue - and it's something that many folks who are moving up from iMovie experience.
Basically, FCP doesn't like .dv files. It likes .mov files. Open up you .dv file in QuickTime and export it out as a QuickTime movie (a .mov file). Be sure to select the Options... button in the export dialog (since you're bound to be overwhelmed, use the settings from your FCP Timeline as a guide) in QuickTime. Using the default settings in QT will not help you (the default is meant for web sharing, not editing, and will end up being step backwards).
In the future, avoid using iMovie captured material in FCP. Capture and digitize using FCP. Don't ask me why Apple decided to do this, but you cannot simply port your files from iMovie and get them working in FCP without a lot of hassle.

XAVC 4K playback performance on Mac Pro

2009 Nehalem 2.66GHz 8-core Mac Pro with 16GB RAM and GTX570, running OS X 10.8.5.
As part of my freelance post work, I've started tackling 4K XAVC-I footage from the Sony FS7. The footage loads alright, but is impossible to play without serious stuttering. Brand new project. I tried any playback resolutions between full and 1/8, same behavior. I can't play a single second without the drop frame indicator going orange and starting to rack up dropped frames.
CPU utilization during playback is steady at 70%, and drive reads are at 80MB/s (our SAN successfully delivers 350MB/s).
Tried both Premiere CC and CC(2014), same behavior.
Performance in DaVinci Resolve doesn't look much different.
It's going to be a week or so before I'm back at the machine, so I'm preparing my attack plan. "Gotta buy a new computer" is the easiest possible answer but also the most expensive (we can all predict the boss` reaction) and not necessarily accurate one. Maybe it is the right one, but part of my job is to eliminate other possible (and cheaper) causes first.
What is the current state of 4K playback in Premiere? Is it two camps of "always worked for me" and "never works for me"? Has anyone had playback issues that were fixed by updating CUDA drivers, Premiere patches, identifying odd bugs, etc.?
I'm going to play with the video output, Mercury settings, source drive, and transcode to 4K ProRes at different bitrates... any other suggestions?
We all know that the new black Mac Pro "can do 4K", but I haven't heard a statement that "no other Macs can". Surprisingly, I haven't found discussions (let alone official recommendations) of minimum hardware requirements for Premiere and 4K. I'd be happy to be pointed to any if they exist. The CPUs in this 2009 Mac Pro should still pack more punch than any iMac model in the market, and is 25% slower than the baseline 2013 MP. If it's the GPU, I'd be happy to hear at least one testimony like "never worked with my GTX570 but once I went GTX680 I finally set sailing".
Thanks!

I use a Sony Notebook with 4 K Display and a USB 3 disk 2TB with footage from the FS 7, sequence lenght 3 hours and I have no problems. All is working very well.

Best hard drive performance on mac pro for final cut express

This week I'll be setting up a basic 4 core mac pro with 16 gb ram and 2 internal- 2tb WD Caviar Black drives. I'm wondering what would give me the best performance for running final cut express, and I'm considering setting up software raid 0 or using one drive for boot and one for scratch. Or should I set up software raid 0 with boot and scratch partitions? Or other suggestions? Thanks.

My recommendations -
With 2 drives in your Mac Pro, use *one disk for OS X and all of your apps;* the *second disk for data* (including your FCE scratch disk location). Partition each drive as a *single partition,* which will maximize performance over time.
In addition, you should invest in at least 1 external drive to use for backup purposes; if you don't, the day will come when you wish you had.
I strongly recommend AGAINST doing software RAID. Certainly not for your situation with only 2 drives, one of which will be your system HD; but also because hardware RAID is faster, more reliable, and does not require CPU resources to run.
Your internal SATA drives will provide plenty of performance for most video editing needs. You also have the ability to put 4 drives in your Mac Pro, in which case you can utilize the extra drives to provide additional performance if/when you get into serious multi-multi track video compositing.

Slow Performance On Mac Pro 12-Core

Hello Everyone,
I just recently purchased a 2012 Mac pro 12-Core and i have been getting unbelievabley slow performance with it. I am using Premiere Pro CS6 and it seems that the footage can sometimes get a bit laggy at times and not play back smoothly, sometimes rendering can take a bit of time as well. However here are the specs of my system:
Mac Pro 12-Core 2.4GHz (2.67GHz Turbo Boost)
40GB of Ram
ATI 5770 Graphics Card
1TB scratch disk (with a user on the drive that i can boot into)
OCZ 120GB Vertex 3 SSD OS/APPS drive
First question i would like to get answered once and for all.. Did i make a bad decision by purchasing a computer with such a slow clock speed (2.4GHz)?? I figured since The new editing software is switching to 64bit it shouldn't depend on clock speed anymore? (i just want to be sure that i purchased a more than capable machine) However i will be buying a Samsung 840 Pro Series 256GB SSD Drive for Scratch within the month. (I dont have the budget to buy a Raid controller yet to utilize 6GB/s transfer speeds, so 1 Fast SSD drive will have to do for now)
I should mention the current SSD drive im on right now only has 13GB remaining, would that affect performance? Also, my 1Tb media drive is filled up with CRAP from my previous computer (Migration transferred EVERYTHING to that drive, only 120GB remains) would that drive with the media im working with affect performance too? Also just as a test, i took some footage from my GoPro Hero 3 camera and put it on my SSD to see if that would eliminate the lag, but still lag was present in Premiere.. (the footage was in a crappy .M4P format, so that may have affected it, but I dont know)
Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!
-Thanks in Advance!

The new editing software is switching to 64bit it shouldn't depend on clock speed anymore?
Wrong, clock speed is everything.
I should mention the current SSD drive im on right now only has 13GB remaining, would that affect performance?
No, not really.
Also, my 1Tb media drive is filled up with CRAP from my previous computer (Migration transferred EVERYTHING to that drive, only 120GB remains) would that drive with the media im working with affect performance too?
When fill rates go up, performance goes down. With almost 90% fill rate, the disk performs only at around 50% of a new disk.
Two disks is absolute bare minimum, and your cores will constantly be waiting for the disks to read or write data, sitting idle most of the time.
Also just as a test, i took some footage from my GoPro Hero 3 camera and put it on my SSD to see if that would eliminate the lag, but still lag was present in Premiere..
GoPro material requires a very fast computer, which yours is not with the low clock speed, outdated E5620 CPU's, only two disks, and a non-CUDA capable video card.
Take a look at the PPBM5 Benchmark and look at the system at rank # 854, which is a MacPro, very similar to your system, dual E5620, AMD video card, less memory but uses three disks.
So, your system would be around the same rank as the one above, among the slowest 25% of all systems and something like 10 - 15 times slower than a fast system. You tax your system to the extreme with the GoPro Hero3 material, and the consequence is the slow performance you see.
Sorry, not much you can do, other than get a new system. If you sell it now, it may get you a price, good enough to get a much faster Windows system and maybe even keep the change. Simply said, you bought a MacPro for € 3.5 K, sell it for € 3 K, buy a PC for € 2.5 K that is around 5-6 times faster and your loss is recovered.
However i will be buying a Samsung 840 Pro Series 256GB SSD Drive for Scratch within the month
What a pity the MacPro does not have SATA 6G ports, only SATA 3G, because then that SSD will run at almost half speed.

Parallels performance on Mac Pro

I'm strongly considering a Mac Pro purchase to replace not only a Dual G5 but also a Dual Core Pentium Dell. I run large format posters and prints from my home office. I only have the Dell because the RIP software (Roland Versaworks) is Windows only. Can anyone running Parallels on either a 3GHz or 2.66GHz give me some insight as to performance of ANY apps that you may be using Parallels for.
My setup would include either the 2.66 or 3GHz, 4GB RAM and the 250GB HD for starters. I'm going to customize storage with HD I purchase seperately.
It would be real nice to be able to get those two heaters from under my desk!
Power Mac G5/2.7GHz DP, MBP 2.16GHz, Powerbook 12 G4/1.5GHz Mac OS X (10.4.7)

parallel currently does not work with the Mac Pro.
The folks at Parallels have said they will release an
update n the near future that will correct the
problem that keeps the Mac Pro and Parallels from
running.
Not 100% correct.
From the Admin user go into the terminal and enter
sudo nvram boot-args="-legacy maxmem=XXXX"
where XXXX is a number. Parallels suggest 1024 or 2048, but for me I had to go-to 4096 before it worked. Then reboot. This puts the Mac Pro back into 32 bit mode.
You can then start parallels again and create & run your virtual systems.
To reset back to 64 bit user
sudo nvram boot-args=""
A screen-shot of Parallels running on my Mac Pro
Here I am running both Suse 8.2 Linux and WinXP SP2

Lousy Performance of Mac Pro X1900 XT in Leopard

Being the paranoid person I am, I installed Leopard to an external FW 800 drive to test it. Immediately, the window drawing in Leopard did not seem as snappy to me as it did in Tiger. Then, I pulled up iTunes, to check what version of iTunes comes with Leopard 10.5.0... I was stunned, not by the version of iTunes, but at the graphics lameness I witnessed.
If you launch iTunes then choose iTunes | About iTunes you will see that when the credits scroll by, they scroll by all choppy and herky-jerky. Yes folks, that's right, Apple's fastest and most top of the line machine -- a Mac Pro with an X1900 XT -- is not sufficiently swift enough to properly display the credits for iTunes.
Yes, I tried 10.5.1, same difference.
Needless to say, I'm sticking with Tiger until Apple fixes the X1900 XT driver(s) in Leopard.
Can anyone else with a Mac Pro and X1900 XT please go to iTunes | About iTunes and commiserate?

Just for info; Leopard is not a full 64 bit operating system. In fact, there is only 1 Apple GUI app that is compiled for x86_64 and that is Xcode, and even that runs in 32 bit mode by default, unless you uncheck the "Run in 32 bit mode" box when you do a Get Info on it.
There are many 64 bit frameworks and libraries, but the rest of the operating system applications are all 32 bit.
You can see that for yourself by running:
file /path to applications/* | grep x86_64
In a terminal.
Hyperion:~ will$ file /Applications/Utilities//Contents/MacOS/ | grep x86_64
/Applications/Utilities/OSXPM.app/Contents/MacOS/OSXPM: Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64
Hyperion:~ will$
I have 2 x86_64 apps, but only because I recompiled them to see if they worked.
There are a handful of x86_64 apps in /usr/bin and /usr/sbin, but thats about it. Oh, Apache is 64 bit by the way.

HD video performance on Mac Pro 4

I have a new Mac Pro 4 core. It has 1.5TB of disk in a raid 0 configuration and 5GB of RAM. It also uses the ATI x1900 video card. The display is an Apple Cinema 23".
It has done all of the software updates.
The only software loaded onto the machine so far is FCS.
Now when I try to watch The BBC HD video at 1920x1080 that I download to my local hard drive (vide from here http://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/hd/bbc-blue.html ), it is very choppy.
IMHO, this machine should be able to play this video back in real time with NO issue. What do I need to do to correct this issue?

To tell the truth, sending folks off to read a blog or another site when asking for help troubleshooting. And you fail to mention you have the X1900 in a non-supported or alternate slot.
Mixing 7300 GT and Radeon doesn't work. And having two Radeons???
There are lots of threads here on using the Expansion Slot Utility and video card configurations.

My Mac Pro is running slow...

Not ready to buy a new computer yet.
it is 5 years old running 10.6 Lion. What might I do to clean it up and get it running faster?
Thanks,
Mark

5 yrs old does little to tell us what yours is and has now...
But 2007-8 and you need FBDIMMs and should start with 16GB probably, some faster and more disk drives for system, media and projects, for scratch. Even processor upgrade.
ATI Radeon 5770
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC742ZM/A
http://www.amazon.com/Apple-ATI-Radeon-5770-MC742ZM/dp/B003Z6QH6M
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/726537-REG/Apple_MC742ZM_A_ATI_Radeon_HD_5 770.html
How To Install and Remove Memory Mac Pro
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT4433
2x2GB FBDIMM DDR2 667MHz @ $36
http://www.amazon.com/BUFFERED-PC2-5300-FB-DIMM-APPLE-Memory/dp/B002ORUUAC/
For best performance on Mac Pro, install memory in risers symmetrically
The Mac Pro comes with two memory riser cards, each with four DIMM slots. With a total of eight slots, you can add up to 16 GB of memory.
Note: DIMMs must be installed in pairs of equal size from the same vendor. For instance, you must not have one or three DIMMs on either riser at any time. Additionally, two DIMMs from different vendors should not be combined and used as a pair.
Other configurations of DIMM pairs are still compatible with Final Cut Studio, but may not achieve the same performance levels as when DIMM pairs are installed on both risers evenly.
Riser A contains:
Riser B contains:
2 x 512MB
2 x 512MB
2 x 1GB
2 x 1GB
2 x 2GB
2 x 2GB
4 x 512MB
4 x 512MB
4 x 1GB
4 x 1GB
4 x 2GB
4 x 2GB
https://support.apple.com/kb/TS1957
WD Black 1TB $93
http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Caviar-Internal-Desktop/dp/B0036Q7MV0/
WD Green 3TB $149 - backup
http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Caviar-Green-Desktop/dp/B004RORMF6/
WD VR 10K 250GB $103 200MB/sec boot drive :
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007V5A1BK/
Those last and last and make a nice boot drive.
SSD: Samsung 830 128GB $99
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0077CR60Q/
Final Cut Pro X, Motion 5, Compressor 4: Graphics card compatibility
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4664
http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/specs/

Advice Mac Pro 5,1

Hello...
Please get me a every advice..
For you, I did well to buy MacPro 12-core (2x2,66 GHZ 6-core) 2010 and 16GB of memory ram?
It is very speed and powerfull of all computer of the world?
I have buy other two slot of memory ram 2x4GB in total arrived 24GB of memory ram from OWC..
THe question is, it is normal that to start-up and shut-up sometimes close/start speed and close/start a lot of seconds?
Because, I made a comparison a iMac with 8GB and MacPro with 16GB they are same to thing shut/start-up, only all programms it is very speed from open/close and work..
Ultimate question, I have tried remove a slot of 4GB and use 12GB it is a bit faster than 16GB why? Or maybe I'm wrong?
What do you thing?

Been over this before.
CS5.5 prefers
http://macperformanceguide.com/PhotoshopCS5-performance.html
http://macperformanceguide.com/OptimizingPhotoshopCS5-Intro.html
There are 32 tips about Mac Pro such as...
Which Mac Pro CPU for Photography, Video, Sound?
Mac Pro Westmere Clock Speed, Cores, and Cache
When More Is Less: Photoshop Slower With 12 Cores Than 6
Mac Pro Westmere Estimating CPU Performance
Mac Pro Westmere Hits and Misses
Mac Pro Westmere Ordering Tips: What to Get and What to Skip
Mac Pro Westmere Solid State Drive Option
Mac Pro Westmere How Much Memory and Where to Buy
Mac Pro Westmere Value Compared to Quad-Core iMac
Mac Pro Westmere Internal SATA Bandwidth
Mac Pro Westmere Test Machine Configuration
Mac Pro Westmere Photoshop Performance: diglloydSpeed1
Mac Pro Westmere Photoshop Performance: diglloydMedium
Mac Pro Westmere Photoshop Performance: diglloydHuge
Mac Pro Westmere Photoshop CS5 Panorama (Auto Align and Auto Blend)
http://macperformanceguide.com/Reviews-MacProWestmere.html
24GB RAM or more (3 x 8GB is good place to start)
http://macperformanceguide.com/Mac-Upgrade-CaseStudy-MacPro-Memory.html
SSD for system
1 x 3.33GHz 6-core
You want processor to be highest MHz and CS5 does not make efficient use of 12 cores and there is overhead in having two processors (2 x 6-core) which is where and why Intel is tweaking and optimizing and improving on the Quick Path interconnect and to speed up memory sharing between the two, as well as increase L3 cache, in the interest of rediucing latency.
Some things are best done like opening and sving when you put your files and projects on disk arrays, even the OWC PCIe SSD (1TB of SSD).
You might fid some of the articles in the macperformanceguide interesting.
And this: http://macperformanceguide.com/index.html

GarageBand performance on Mac Pro

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