Performance Macpro = Macbookpro

Hello everyone,
I am looking into upgrading my 3-4y old iMac, because I recently started doing a lot of 3D rendering and video editing.
The old iMac just isn’t powerfull enough anymore…  Although it was a great computer.
At first I was convinced I was getting the lowest model of the macpro, cause that’s all I can afford in that range.
But since the new macbookpro’s came out, I’m totally torn and don’t know wich is better any more.
I don’t really care about the portability since I have an old 13” mbp as well, so it just comes down to performance for me.
The top of the line mbp costs less than the macpro and according to the benchmarks beats it!?
Also it would suck to see the macpro updated just after I bought it… your thoughts? I’m puzzeled…. Pffft
All input appreciated!

Hello guys,
Thanks for your input. Although im not 100% convinced yet the macpro is the right choice.
As i mentioned, rendering is a big part of my work. Currently it is taking longer and longer on my iMac.
My personal experience is that rendering is most affected by pure processor power.
Now the macpro i'm looking at has one processor socket, standard equipped with a 4 core 2,8ghz.
I know from back in the days i was a pc user, that upgrading your processor usually also meant upgrading the motherboard. So i assume this is also the case for the mac pro's?
So if i ever want to upgrade in a few years, the only option available would be to buy an old processor that fits the motherboard?
I am however happy to hear the hard drives, ram and graphics can be upgraded.
Maybe stretching my budget and buying the dual processor macpro with 2x 2,4ghz quad core would be my best investment? It gives me the possibility to upgrade the two sockets. Standard i get 4 cores extra and 3gb of ram extra, that seems fair.
Oh boy and i need the apple cinema display as well... its going to be a hard nut to crack.
But i'll probably be good for a few years i guess?

Similar Messages

Boot issue with External HDD since OSX 10.10

Hi
Wanted to share my experience and I hope someone can help me here. I have a 2TB USB3.0 LaCie Minimus HDD that worked just fine on OSX 10.9 and even Windows 8.1. However since Yosemite (10.10) every single Mac (MacPro, MacBookPro) that I plug the HDD to will not longer boot-up normally (cold boot) IF the HDD is turned on. Power off the HDD every Mac on 10.10 will boot normally. However reboot and wake-up from sleep work fine.
To make sure I explained my self correctly.
Power off your mac on OSX 10.9, have the 2TB USB3.0 LaCie Minimus HDD (powered on) connected to your Mac. then power it on back and no problems.
Power off your PC with Win 8.1, have the 2TB USB3.0 LaCie Minimus HDD (powered on) connected to your PC. then power it on back and no problems.
Power off your mac on OSX 10.10, have the 2TB USB3.0 LaCie Minimus HDD (powered on) connected to your Mac. then power it on back and the Mac boot will be stuck until your power off the 2TB USB3.0 LaCie Minimus HDD.
Also note that Rebbot and wake from sleep work just fine in every situation and OSs. I reseted the PRAM, SMC, and tested the HDD on a Fresh 10.10 install as well as on a 10.10 upgrade and a Old 10.9.X MacBookPro.
To make sure it was not a partition problem I formatted the drive and removed all partitions (EFI) several times on each OSs... Same result.
Finally I contacted LaCie and I am waiting for their feedback.
Message was edited by: Akiba-Seattle

Here you are!
PS Thanks for helping. In My case it was disk2
XXXs-Mac-Pro:~ XXX$ diskutil info -plist disk0
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Bootable</key>
<false/>
<key>BusProtocol</key>
<string>PCI</string>
<key>CanBeMadeBootable</key>
<false/>
<key>CanBeMadeBootableRequiresDestroy</key>
<false/>
<key>Content</key>
<string>GUID_partition_scheme</string>
<key>DeviceBlockSize</key>
<integer>512</integer>
<key>DeviceIdentifier</key>
<string>disk0</string>
<key>DeviceNode</key>
<string>/dev/disk0</string>
<key>DeviceTreePath</key>
<string>IODeviceTree:/PCI0@0/RP05@1C,4/SSD0@0/PRT0@0/PMP@0</string>
<key>Ejectable</key>
<false/>
<key>FreeSpace</key>
<integer>0</integer>
<key>GlobalPermissionsEnabled</key>
<false/>
<key>IOKitSize</key>
<integer>251000193024</integer>
<key>Internal</key>
<true/>
<key>LowLevelFormatSupported</key>
<false/>
<key>MediaName</key>
<string>APPLE SSD SM0256F Media</string>
<key>MediaType</key>
<string>Generic</string>
<key>MountPoint</key>
<string></string>
<key>OS9DriversInstalled</key>
<false/>
<key>ParentWholeDisk</key>
<string>disk0</string>
<key>RAIDMaster</key>
<false/>
<key>RAIDSlice</key>
<false/>
<key>SMARTStatus</key>
<string>Verified</string>
<key>SolidState</key>
<true/>
<key>SupportsGlobalPermissionsDisable</key>
<false/>
<key>SystemImage</key>
<false/>
<key>TotalSize</key>
<integer>251000193024</integer>
<key>VolumeName</key>
<string></string>
<key>WholeDisk</key>
<true/>
<key>Writable</key>
<true/>
<key>WritableMedia</key>
<true/>
<key>WritableVolume</key>
<false/>
</dict>
</plist>
XXXs-Mac-Pro:~ XXX$ diskutil info -plist disk2
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Bootable</key>
<false/>
<key>BusProtocol</key>
<string>USB</string>
<key>CanBeMadeBootable</key>
<false/>
<key>CanBeMadeBootableRequiresDestroy</key>
<false/>
<key>Content</key>
<string>GUID_partition_scheme</string>
<key>DeviceBlockSize</key>
<integer>512</integer>
<key>DeviceIdentifier</key>
<string>disk2</string>
<key>DeviceNode</key>
<string>/dev/disk2</string>
<key>DeviceTreePath</key>
<string>IODeviceTree:/PCI0@0/PEG0@1/BR00@0/BR13@1/XHC1@0</string>
<key>Ejectable</key>
<true/>
<key>FreeSpace</key>
<integer>0</integer>
<key>GlobalPermissionsEnabled</key>
<false/>
<key>IOKitSize</key>
<integer>2000398934016</integer>
<key>Internal</key>
<false/>
<key>LowLevelFormatSupported</key>
<false/>
<key>MediaName</key>
<string>ST2000DM 001-1ER164 Media</string>
<key>MediaType</key>
<string>Generic</string>
<key>MountPoint</key>
<string></string>
<key>OS9DriversInstalled</key>
<false/>
<key>ParentWholeDisk</key>
<string>disk2</string>
<key>RAIDMaster</key>
<false/>
<key>RAIDSlice</key>
<false/>
<key>SMARTStatus</key>
<string>Not Supported</string>
<key>SupportsGlobalPermissionsDisable</key>
<false/>
<key>SystemImage</key>
<false/>
<key>TotalSize</key>
<integer>2000398934016</integer>
<key>VolumeName</key>
<string></string>
<key>WholeDisk</key>
<true/>
<key>Writable</key>
<true/>
<key>WritableMedia</key>
<true/>
<key>WritableVolume</key>
<false/>
</dict>
</plist>
XXXs-Mac-Pro:~ XXX$ diskutil cs list
No CoreStorage logical volume groups found
XXXs-Mac-Pro:~ XXX$
XXXs-Mac-Pro:~ XXX$ sudo gpt -vv -r show /dev/disk0
Password:
gpt show: /dev/disk0: mediasize=251000193024; sectorsize=512; blocks=490234752
gpt show: /dev/disk0: PMBR at sector 0
gpt show: /dev/disk0: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: /dev/disk0: Sec GPT at sector 490234751
      start       size index contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640 488555536      2 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
488965176    1269536      3 GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
490234712          7
490234719         32         Sec GPT table
490234751          1         Sec GPT header
XXXs-Mac-Pro:~ XXX$
XXXs-Mac-Pro:~ XXX$ sudo gpt -vv -r show /dev/disk2
gpt show: /dev/disk2: mediasize=2000398934016; sectorsize=512; blocks=3907029168
gpt show: /dev/disk2: PMBR at sector 0
gpt show: /dev/disk2: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: /dev/disk2: Sec GPT at sector 3907029167
       start        size index contents
           0           1         PMBR
           1           1         Pri GPT header
           2          32         Pri GPT table
          34           6
          40      409600      1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
      409640 3906357344      2 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
3906766984      262151
3907029135          32         Sec GPT table
3907029167           1         Sec GPT header

How can i export a movie from a slideshow at 25p instead of 30p

I'm running on several Mac products, iMac, MacPro, MacBookPro, etc...
While i have finished a nice Diaporama (slideshow) in iPhoto version 9.6 for example on Yosemite 10.10.2,
the only question when i click on EXPORT is which format (e.g., 720, or full HD 1080 for exemple)
But before, i was lucky enough to be able to select the number of fps (e.g. 25 in Europe as you all know)
Now, since a while, this question just disappears ! plouf ! no more....
So, the fps is now by default the one for US, which is 30.. cool !! and incredible...
Does now Apple think that US is the only country in the world ??
While 30 frames is fine on a computer, it is not on a pal DVD...
Any comments from anyone around the globe would be fine ! :-)
Thanks anyway
Patrick

When exporting a slideshow from iPhoto for use in iDVD select 480p only. iDVD doesn't use the other formats and struggles with encoding them down to 480p.
I'll also ask the Hosts to move this topic to the iDVD community where uses with iDVD will be more likely to reply.

Input on backup plan

Hi all,
After much investigation and some great suggestions and information from members of the forum, I have decided on a plan for OS/apps drive security and data/work files backup for my Mac Pro.
For boot/apps drive reliability (not backup) I am going to try a RAID mirror config on the initial 320GB drive in bay#1 and a second WD 320GB drive in bay#3 (see illustration below for visuals). That should give me confidence knowing that I have an exact and current copy of the OS/apps drive in case the main OS/apps drive goes down. I will be able to seamlessly continue work flow.
My plan for backup of the data/work files drive, 500GB in bay#2, is to schedule regular incremental backups with Retrospect Express (or something similar) to an external 1TB FW drive. For cost effectiveness, I bought a FW drive with only 3 interfaces (FW 800 which I am using, FW 400 and USB 2). One question regarding the FW drive is that it has 3 options on the power switch, off, auto, and on. I am running the drive in 'auto' mode right now. I imagine that is an energy saver and easier on the drive. Is this the case?
I would love to have stayed strictly SATA and gotten a Firmtech dual hotswap case with PCIe controller card and an eSATA drive, but the budget has already gone rogue on me, lol. Anyhow, one of the best bits of advice I got was that the important point is to make a decision and do something, and what works for one person may not be the best solution for another. I always invite informed opinions though. I have been learning a boatload over the past few weeks. This forum is a fabulous and endless source of generous information.
Here's the illustration:
Thanks to all who gave valuable insight and informative links.
Best,
Dennis

Dennis,
Your original post does not describe the nature of the work that you do on your MacPro. I have a MacPro 8-core that is my principal machine for photography (21MP RAW files using Lightroom 2.2, Photoshop CS4) and video editing (iMovie, Final Cut Express). Currently my video files occupy 1TB of drive space, my photography library is about 700GB.
Here is my set and regardless of your application, I think that you would be well served by same:
Bay1 - 1TB with 2 partitions: 900GB for OS, apps and standard User folder stuff (iTunes, some video, documents, financial stuff), and 100GB partition for Bootcamp/WinXP Pro for PC only games.
Bay2 - 1TB drive with 2 partitions: 100GB scratch disk for Photoshop and 900GB for SuperDuper clones of Bay 1 boot drive.
Bay3 and Bay4 - 2 x 1TB drives in RAID 0 configuration for 1.8TB of actual fast storage for working photo and video files and my Lightroom library.
*If I were you, the first upgrade I would make would be a pair of matched drives to create a RAID 0 using 2 bays of your MP. This almost doubles your effective read/write times over a single drive of the same type.*
To back up and off load files that are not needed but need to be kept accessible, I use a SansDigital 5-bay external eSata tower connected to a HighPoint eSata host PCIe card installed in slot 4 in my MP. The SansDigital unit is very quiet and sits next to my MP. I use in a JBOD configuration (5 separate hard drives, 3 x 1TB and 2 x 750GB). I used to use single external FW800 drives for extra storage, but I quickly outgrew them and they created lots of clutter around my work area. My working files from my RAID 0 are backed up to a ReadyNAS NV+ on my gigabit network in a RAIDX (redundant) configuration with 4 x 1TB drives for a total capacity of 2.8TB.
Critical data, photos and video archives are backup up weekly to my old single external drives which I rotate through a safe deposit box at my local bank for secure offsite storage.
And finally, I have an older Lacie 1.5TB USB external drive connected to my Airport Extreme for Time Machine backups of my User folders on my MacPro, MacBookPro and my kids' iMac and my daughter's MacBook. This works seemlessly.
For back up software, I actually mirror my data folders rather than make incremental backups. Do it this way allows me instant access to any of my files without having to go through a restoration process.
For software, I've tried many and for a few years I was sold on Chronosync. For the past few months, however, I've been using Synchronize! Pro X instead. SPX works faster and more reliably on my network than Chronosync.
Obviously, I have a considerable investment in my hardware, but I built it up over time. I have learned a lot from other posters in forums like this. Another great resource to check out for MacPro owners is www.macgurus.com. They have some great detailed articles on building RAIDs and other storage speed tips.
Good luck on building your system.
Bud James
North Wales, PA

Magic Move causing problems with scaled animation

I have a presentation that uses the Magic Move transition between slides. The Magic Move only effects a solid rectangle at the top of the slide which moves to the bottom of the next slide. The Magic Move transition works great except it causes a rescaling of an object on the slide that has been scaled using the scale animation. There are slides where I animate text to move and scale to a larger percentage.
The text animation moves and scales perfectly. When the slide is about to preform the Magic Move transition (advancing to the next slide) the object that was scaled by animation scales back to its original size. Then the presentation advanced to the next slide.
I've reproduced this on two other computers with 'start from scratch' presentations to test. It occurs with any object - text, shape, etc. Can someone else verify that this is a bug or not?
OSX 10.9.4
Keynote 6.2.2 (1878)
Keynote 6.2 (1861)
MacPro
MacBookPro
Thanks.

UPDATE.
Just tested my issue in Keynote version 6.0 and there were no issues. Scaled animated objects and text combined with the Magic Move transition will not result in a the scaled object reverting back to it's original size during the slide transition.
I still would like verification from another user that you can repeat my problem in version 6.2. Although I'm 80% sure this is a bug I have found, until someone else can confirm my issue i'll hold off on that conclusion.

I need to sort very large Excel files and perform other operations. How much faster would this be on a MacPro rather than my MacBook Pro i7, 2.6, 15R?

I am a scientist and run my own business. Money is tight. I have some very large Excel files (~200MB) that I need to sort and perform logic operations on. I currently use a MacBookPro (i7 core, 2.6GHz, 16GB 1600 MHz DDR3) and I am thinking about buying a multicore MacPro. Some of the operations take half an hour to perform. How much faster should I expect these operations to happen on a new MacPro? Is there a significant speed advantage in the 6 core vs 4 core? Practically speaking, what are the features I should look at and what is the speed bump I should expect if I go to 32GB or 64GB? Related to this I am using a 32 bit version of Excel. Is there a 64 bit spreadsheet that I can us on a Mac that has no limit on column and row size?

Grant Bennet-Alder,
It’s funny you mentioned using Activity Monitor. I use it all the time to watch when a computation cycle is finished so I can avoid a crash. I keep it up in the corner of my screen while I respond to email or work on a grant. Typically the %CPU will hang at ~100% (sometimes even saying the application is not responding in red) but will almost always complete the cycle if I let it go for 30 minutes or so. As long as I leave Excel alone while it is working it will not crash. I had not thought of using the Activity Monitor as you suggested. Also I did not realize using a 32 bit application limited me to 4GB of memory for each application. That is clearly a problem for this kind of work. Is there any work around for this? It seems like a 64-bit spreadsheet would help. I would love to use the new 64 bit Numbers but the current version limits the number of rows and columns. I tried it out on my MacBook Pro but my files don’t fit.
The hatter,
This may be the solution for me. I’m OK with assembling the unit you described (I’ve even etched my own boards) but feel very bad about needing to step away from Apple products. When I started computing this was the sort of thing computers were designed to do. Is there any native 64-bit spreadsheet that allows unlimited rows/columns, which will run on an Apple? Excel is only 64-bit on their machines.
Many thanks to both of you for your quick and on point answers!

After Effects CC (2014) MacPro Performance??

I just installed the new After Effects CC (2014) on my 2013 MP with 2 D700s. I am not noticing any significant difference from the previous version of AE. GPUs are still showing as 2GB of VRAM (see below). I dropped in a 5K (5120x2700) R3D clip into a 1080p comp, scaled to width and tried to move the playhead, let alone play and it is extremely sluggish (media is on a G-Raid). Even at "low" debayer and 1/4 res I seem to max out at 20fps without ram previewing. Mercury Transmit is off, both "Viewer Quality" options are set to "Faster". Even with a 1080p ProResHQ file I can't get realtime playback without ram previewing.
What I can do to fix this?
"GPU Information"
Fast Draft:
Available
Texture Memory:
818.00 MB
Ray-tracing:
CPU
(GPU not available - incompatible device or CUDA driver)
OpenGL
Vendor:
ATI Technologies Inc.
Device:
AMD Radeon HD - FirePro D700 OpenGL Engine
Version:
2.1 ATI-1.20.11
Total Memory:
2.00 GB
Shader Model:
CUDA
Driver Version:
1.0 (5.0 or later required)
Devices:
Current Usable Memory:
Maximum Usable Memory:
System Details:
MacPro 5,1
3.5GHz 6-core
32GB Ram
AMD D700 GPUs
OS X 10.9.2
Single, 1920x1080 display connected.
Any help is greatly appreciated.

Tim,
Thank you for the replies.
Is this to say that to simply play a quicktime video file (no effects or adjustments made) in After Effects the expected behaviour is that it must be RAM previewed?
This is how After Effects currently works. It hasn't changed in many years. You can initiate playback without RAM Preview (press spacebar), but the playback speed will depend on how fast the frames can be cached to memory for playback, and will very likely not be real-time except for the simplest of comps.
This is exactly the change that I am looking for. In my opinion, "the simplest of comps" would be things like "a comp with a QT file and no effects/adjustments", "an Illustrator file moving in the example of a credit roll". Hopefully this will all be improved upon in future releases. I am looking forward to seeing them.
As per the After Effects blog post a few months ago about future improvements all that I (and I am confident that the majority of users will agree) would like to see is for After Effects to be significantly faster (think the improvement to the "search" feature in Premiere).
We also want to make After Effects faster. As I mentioned, we are currently focused on performance-related improvements to After Effects. The blog post you referenced was written while we were in the middle of developing the After Effects CC 2014 (13.0) release, and beginning to think about our next release. A side note here: performance in After Effects includes both rendering performance and interactive performance; that is, how fast After Effects allows you to work.
I will anxiously await these updates. As a note: I feel that interactive performance is a higher priority than rendering performance.
During the CC2014 release presentation on video there were multiple references to "not waiting for renders", except this is exactly what you have to do when working in After Effects.
Can you be more specific about what context you saw this in? Can you provide a link? "Not waiting for renders" is a fairly generic statement, so context is important. It may have been used in connection with the new text templates feature in After Effects CC 2014, which allows faster workflows between Premiere Pro and After Effects, or with Dynamic Link in general. Otherwise, I need to know how that phrase was used in order to understand your perception of it.
Yes, the context was always in relation to either dynamic linking with PPro, or Direct linking betweens PPro and SpeedGrade. However, the overall impression I got was that Adobe's goal with the video applications was to improve the interactive performance so that users can focus more on being creative and less on waiting for the software.
Could you please also address the issue of After Effects still recognizing the MacPro GPUs as having 2GB of memory instead of 12GB?
We have a bug open on this and are investigating.
Thank you. I was really hoping that the 2014 release would fix this, but understand that it is likely quite complicated and there are many other improvements/bug fixes that the team is working on. Are there any updates on when this expected? Is this effecting performance or just simply the readout in After Effects' GPU information.
I greatly appreciate you taking the time to address all of these concerns and am looking forward to the continued updates to the entire CC video suite.

New MacPro ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB GDDR5 Motion performance

Thought this might be of interest:-
http://www.apple.com/macpro/performance.html
Scroll down to Graphics Cards and then hit the Motion tab
Peter

http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB999ZM/A
Looks like the upgrade kit will be available in about 2 months?
I am on this mac pro: http://support.apple.com/kb/SP30
Can anyone take a look and tell me if I'm a gen behind? The way I read this is that I have a PCIe slot, but not 2.0. So I'm SOL?
Thanks for any guidance.

AI CS5.1 vrs AI CS6 Performance Issue MacPro

Hi,
I have been happily using AI CS 5.1 (from 5.5) and I have a series of files I created. They are 20x24, 300 DPI and have some type and drawing and a placed 300 DPI 16x20.psd file. They open in about 3 seconds on v5.1, and on v6 they take 3-5 minutes just to open. It's torture.
Working with a series of 9 different but similar files like this drove me back to v5.1!
I have a 2009 MacPro 3,1 2x2.8 Quad Core Intel Xeon with 8 GB RAM.
Any help would be appreciated.
Some minor points:
Do I need more RAM for CS6? I've read on this forum that 64 bit apps like RAM, but it seems so odd that things click and pop in the older version and nearly kill me in CS6 version.
What could be slowing down the performance? Hardware, software or the combination of the 2?
When did Adobe drop all prgress bar feedback during open. Waiting 5 minutes for a file to open without any indication that it's working is bad. The dock icon long ago had a progress bar over the app icon. I wonder when that changed?
Thanks in advance, and so long for now, TOM

You have no idea how many times I've read that very document. So many I've lost count. And this is the first time the importance of what it says there ("A linked After Effects composition will not support Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously multiprocessing") has sunk in. Thank you.
But there definitely is something to fix, because this is very clearly broken. Time for yet another feature request. Sigh...

MacPro Performance Tune Up?

Hi All.
I just got my new MacPro and after feeling the exuberance of a Christmas morning, I am now sad faced in the video performance I was expecting is just not there.
Perhaps there is a tune up process or something I am missing to configure all this mighty horsepower so the render/export times in Final Cut Express don't suck as they do...?
I am using a 2.66 GHz Quad Core Xenon
16 gigs ram and 2x NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 graphics cards
It just blows.
A 10 minute video takes 12 minutes to render. Can that be right? I got that kind of performance on my 2 gig 1.83GHz powerbook.
Any feedback would be appreciated.
Thanks!

The GT120 IS low end 2D. The ATI Radeon HD 4870 as $200 BTO is a better card. The only reason for two 120's is for 3 or 4 monitors. There is no teaming or SLI/CrossFire support in Mac OS.
Maybe in the weeks or months ahead there will even be something better than the 4870s, but I'd return one or both for 4870.
As for rendering video, how many hard drives have you got installed and what are they?
Also, did you import drives or applications from PowerMac or other Mac? Doing so can result in slow and sluggish as molasses. I've seen this happen a number of times, most often with someone coming from G4/G5s.
*Guide to Using Migration Assistant*
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=435350
http://www.primatelabs.ca/blog/mac-benchmarks/
http://eshop.macsales.com/Reviews/Benchmarks/NehalemTests.html
http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=7243896&postcount=230
http://macperformanceguide.com/SnowLeopard-Performance.html
http://macperformanceguide.com/Reviews-MacProNehalem.html
Final Cut Express, is it optimized yet for 4-cores w/ hyper-threading? I think some have speculated it really wasn't (Compressor is).
*COMPRESSOR 3*
The same phenomenon is observed with Compressor (which is part of Final Cut Studio). The Apple Qmaster can be create a Quick Cluster with as many instances as you have cores (or virtual cores).
Each instance is a subprocess that can grab up to 3GB each, though we've never observed it using as much memory as After Effects.
On the other hand, using all available instances doesn't always produce faster render times. *You should experiment with various instance settings to find the sweet spot* for the project you are encoding.
As you see in the graph above, we indicate the number of instances used in each case (e.g. 2i = 2 instances, etc.) Using the "Wildlife Reel" from the QuickTime HD Gallery, we encoded an "HD DVD: H.264 60min" preset. Notice that the Nehalem 2.93 rendered faster with 6 instances. Beyond that, it began to slow.
http://www.barefeats.com/nehal04.html

From MacbookPro to MacPro latency, Sessions out of sync.

Moving from a MacbookPro to a MacPro and loading up a session, I was rudely surprised.
On the MacPro the multiple kick/snare/hihat layers are all out of phase, When they were perfectly in phase on the MacbookPro.
All instruments had plugins on them and the MacPro can proccess them alot faster.
Is there any way to fix this, some sort of compensation checkbox in settings somewhere?.
Or should I just re-aligning them all?

If anyone is interested this seemed to be a problem with prores. When I use a AIC file and conform from 25 to 23.98 then it works fine.

Sapphire HD 7950 on a 2009 MacPro - Aperture Performance

Hi,
Read a few palces here and in other forums but no definite word on the increase performance of the Sapphire HD 7950 over the ATI Radeon HD 4870 on a MacPro 2009. I wonder if someone that made the upgrade would mind comenting. I made a few upgrade to my current tower (SSD drives, 32RAM and USB3 card) so I can wait a couple more years to get a new MacPro. I wonder if it is worth the graphic card upgrade. This machine is for Aperture mostly (iMovie, Pixelmator, iWork, Web etc) and I don't play any games.
Best regards
Raf

Thank you for your answer but I have read all these topics before and I didn't find the information about the resolution supported with this graphic card on OSX (with the display port)...
Yes this card is able to be Up to 3840 x 2160 resolution at 60Htz, but only on windows because apple driver can not support this resolution for this card (for now).
I just want to know if I can connect a monitor with a resolution of 3440 x 1440px at 60Htz on mini Dipslay Port 1.2 with the last version of OSX 10.9.4.
If I ask this question on apple support, it's because I didn't find answers on the web and Sapphire support told me to ask my question here...
I will be sad to buy this monitor if I can not use it on OSX...
Thank you very much and sorry to be insistent.
Alexis.

Upgraded both computers in the household and found Lion is too disruptive to workflow. Do I turn in the new laptop for a pre-Lion rebuild to keep Snow Leopard, or do I return computer and get upgraded memory to improve performance of existing MacBookPro?

Upgraded both computers in the household and found Lion is too disruptive to workflow.
Do I turn in the new laptop for a pre-Lion rebuild to keep Snow Leopard, or do I return new computer and get upgraded memory to improve performance of existing MacBookPro? I'm mostly still happy with existing MacBookPro, but Aperture doesn't work, the computer can't handle it.
Other possibility is setting up virtual machine with Snow Leopard server software on new computer.
Any opinions on what would allow moving forward with the least hassle and best workflow continuity?

hi,
what year and specs does the MBP have

Poor performance with aperture 3.1.1 on macbookpro

Installed aperture 3.1.1 and imported my old iphoto library with approximately 12k images.
I have already disabled faces but still have serious performance issues with: a) opening aperture, b) browsing the library, c) clicking an image in the library or importing an image. Program is not workable basically.
Currently running 10.6.5 on a Macbookpro 5,1 with 4gb ram
Hope someone can help

How long (days, hours) have you given Aperture to process the import?
It can take more than a day (depends on many things).
If you haven't yet let Aperture run unmolested for at least a full night, do so now. Be sure to have your MBP plugged in, on, open, and set to not sleep.
If you have already let Aperture run for many hours, your next step is to go through the usual trouble-shooting. I'd start with "Rebuild Library". This may take hours or even a full day. It may be simpler to delete your current Library, create a new one, and import your iPhoto photos into it.
Before that, check "Window→Show Activity". Any processing going on in the background? (Aperture does, IME, continue to process even when nothing shows in its Activity Window.)
Your hardware is adequate to the task of running Aperture.

Performance upgrade for Lightroom and Photoshop on a MacPro Quad Xeon

I have a MacPro Quad Xeon 2.26(on OSX 10.5.8) with an internal 1tb RAID 0 for a PS scratch. It has 8gb of RAM and I run my apps off the main (boot) drive. My LR cache resides on this boot drive as well. I have dual ACD 23's each running off a GeForce GT 120.
I'm looking for opinions and options to make my life faster.
1. upgrade to 10.6?
2. RAM up to 16gb?
3. OWC Mercury Pro SSD 115gb for my boot and a second for my user files?
I have been reading Diglloyd's stuff but I'm looking for other opinions on cheap speed.
thanks in advance
R

Have you ever cracked open activity monitor? Unless your CPU's regularly peak out, they aren't your weak link.
Congratulations - they are also the most expensive to replace since you basically have to buy a new computer! I'd start with the hard drives - absolutely the slowest link in any modern computer. Start off with an SSD for the system/Applications. Then try moving files you are working on to the SSD to see if that makes a difference as well. I don't know about LightRoom, but with Aperture, once the database files in the Aperture library fragment it's performance drops off dramatically. Changing my Aperture library to be on an SSD and referencing my masters on my internal RAID made a dramatic difference. It feels like I have a new computer!
If you have lots of scratch activity you could be low on memory. Or you could be dealing with photoshop wonkiness like this:
http://macperformanceguide.com/OptimizingPhotoshopCS5-Warmup.html
Throwing hardware at software coding errors like the above won't get you anywhere.
Start with activity monitor. If you aren't routinely maxing out your CPU's focus on disk drives and then memory.
Message was edited by: Eric Eskam

Performance Macpro = Macbookpro

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