Best New MacPro System Configuration for 2k

Hi All,

I'm new to Resolve and not really technical so, please bare with me.
I'll be using Resolve to color a feature that was shot entirely on the Red Epic. I wanted some advice as to which model New Mac Pro to purchase for finishing in 2k and possible DCP delivery.

I'm considering the 6 core model with the AMD D700 card, 32G RAM, and 256 SSD drive for a 2k workflow. Would this system configuration suffice?
Also, any info as to how Resolve might perform in a 2k project over TB2 compared to other storage connections would be appreciated as well.

Some colorists recommended I go with an older refurb or ebay 8 or 12 core mac. After my calculations the price is almost the same after the purchase of GFX cards.
But which is the better Resolve system for 2k? The new 6 or 8 core AMD mac pro or an older 8 or 12 core NVidia Cuda/AMD mac pro?

Any recommendations for a decent color monitor new or used would be greatly appreciated too.
The final pass will be finished at a professional color suite for theater.
Thanks in advance!

[Peter Chamberlain]

Move to the new MacPro. Until we complete our testing and have a formal config guide, we recommend the 8 Core D700 with 16GB system ram, 32GB is even better. You will need a ThunderBolt disk array, not because the SSD is slow.. quite the opposite its fantastically fast.. but its small.

The 6 Core D700 is likely ok too for HD/2K work. Certainly we recommend the dual D700 GPUs for many reasons not the least is they are fast!

The BMD UltraStudio 4K is ThunderBolt connected for your grading monitor.
Peter

I'd go PC if you can, and spend the extra money on a Red Rocket for the Red. You're future proofing yourself by going that route vs the MacPro. Turns out the D700 is actually the gaming card and not the W9000 like everyone is buzzing over. The MacPro seems way overpriced now because of that fact. I called AMD FirePro tech over that because I was pissed I paid the full price for the W9000, and Apple is supposedly selling the D700 way cheaper.

I'd go PC if you can, and spend the extra money on a Red Rocket for the Red. You're future proofing yourself by going that route vs the MacPro. Turns out the D700 is actually the gaming card and not the W9000 like everyone is buzzing over.

It's a little more complicated than that. The main differences between 'pro' and 'consumer' cards on the Windows side are drivers and the level of support you can expect from pro app vendors. Driver considerations don't really apply cross-platform, and pro app vendors present on the Mac platform are clearly going to test with and tune for the D700. Meanwhile, under Windows the D700 appears to load FirePro drivers. It's not really meaningful to say definitively the D700 is a 'gaming card.' It's true that it's not quite a W9000 — Apple seems to have given up ~20% of the performance (and probably done some binning) to run with ~50% of the power consumption, and the D700 doesn't have the W9000's virtual ECC feature — but it's still faster than a lot of other parts called 'FirePro' and that virtual ECC feature also isn't present on every FirePro model, so neither of those choices automatically puts it on the 'gaming' side.

In any event, a Wintel machine likely isn't going to be much cheaper (if at all) if you're buying workstation-class hardware from a top-teir workstation vendor (HP, say). DIY will certainly be somewhat cheaper, but that's a can of worms that many users, particularly in production environments, might not want to open.

Buying a Rocket right now is also sort of a dicey proposition. First off, the price gap between even a DIY Windows system and a Mac Pro isn't generally going to cover the cost of a Rocket. Meanwhile, the first-generation Rocket is a dead end — it won't ever decode Dragon footage — while the Rocket X costs as much as an entire 8C/D700 Mac Pro and you still can't just place an order for one and actually receive it. To complicate the Red situation even further, GPU decoding might soon make a Rocket redundant for anyone who's happy to work 2K real time and wait a little while for final full-res renders. All in all, it's hard to know which way to jump right now with Red workflow.

I'm saying avoid the workstation altogether. I can't see any advantage to having one over a PC with multiple GPU's for editing. I do both CAD design for my own business and production work for CBS. Anymore, I just have one travel ready DIY PC to handle everything, and swap out hardware for each specific job as necessary. I can't tell you how many thousands I've saved over the years doing this. I don't like the new MacPro's, jack of all trades, master of none approach.

Not everyone has the technical skill to be a 'system integrator' as well as an editor/colorist/whatever, and even among people who do have the technical skill, the time investment doesn't necessarily make sense. I went down the Wintel DIY road as a consequence of the dearth of Mac Pro updates over the last couple of years, using a couple of Wintel DIY machines as daily drivers, and while I've gotten by OK that way, I've developed quite a keen appreciation for exactly why people pay extra for a machine that will just provide solid performance out of the box. One of my DIY machines has now been retired fro day to day use for a (nearly) maxed out 27" iMac, and a new Mac Pro is on order to replace the other. The DIY boxes will spend the rest of their days running batch transcoding jobs and similar. Or maybe I'll take one of them home as a gaming box.

At some point I started thinking of gear prices in terms of "How many days at our standard rates does it take to pay this off?" And when the 'day' difference between two systems is measured in low single digits, the system I have to fight with less is going to win every time.

To switch gears a bit, I find the new Mac Pro's form factor extremely interesting as my company moves more into end-to-end production (rather than just post). This thing fits in a camera bag along with a RAID box, with some room to spare for other accessories. I also find that there's a lot of flexibility to the 'external expansion' model enabled by Thunderbolt, which allows pricey peripherals to be easily re-allocated between machines, including between desktops and laptops. So, for instance, I can do a dump from a RAID box to LTO tape from my laptop, instead of having to tie up a machine in a suite just because it has the SAS controller.

Apple has a very interesting machine here, even if it's not quite what a lot of people were expecting. It might be the closest thing anyone has ever shipped to a 'post production appliance' that isn't an outrageously priced application-specific turn-key system.

You can mix CAD cards and gaming cards for extra performance. I have 1 Quadro K4000 + 2 780 GTX; and 1 Firepro W9000 + 2 Radeon R290x. The performance is awesome.

Move to the new MacPro. Until we complete our testing and have a formal config guide, we recommend the 8 Core D700 with 16GB system ram, 32GB is even better.

When does the config guide get released?

Sounds like you are recommending minimum 8 core?

we recommend the 8 Core ... The 6 Core D700 is likely ok too

8 seems to be a strategical investment : CPUs seem to be upgradable, so in the future you could buy a 12 or 8 core, and sell your core. But who would buy a 6core ? you can sell a used 8 to people that acquired a 6, but who would want a 6 ?

Move to the new MacPro. Until we complete our testing and have a formal config guide, we recommend the 8 Core D700 with 16GB system ram, 32GB is even better. You will need a ThunderBolt disk array, not because the SSD is slow.. quite the opposite its fantastically fast.. but its small.

The 6 Core D700 is likely ok too for HD/2K work. Certainly we recommend the dual D700 GPUs for many reasons not the least is they are fast!

The BMD UltraStudio 4K is ThunderBolt connected for your grading monitor.
Peter

I appreciate that it takes time to acquire and test various configurations before the Configuration Guide is updated for the new Mac Pro processing a 4K workflow using DaVinci Resolve. But one thing about recommending an 8-core minimum for 4K versus a 6-core machine is the additional cost for perhaps less than one-seventh greater CPU power.

I plan to order a Mac Pro with 32 GB RAM, 1 TB flash memory! dual D700 GPUs so no argument there. But with those components in a 6-core 3.5 GHz box, I would, simplistically, have a total of 21 GHz central processing power. Going up to the 8-core 3.0 GHz option, gives me 24 GHz central processing power. The 12-core 2.7 GHz option gives me 32.4 GHz processing power.

6-core seems to be the value proposition but I don't know how well it will do the 4K job. The power jump from the 8-core to the 12-core is quite significant when you need as many cores as possible. The power jump from 6-core to 8-core is quite a bit less. But if memory serves me correctly the cost to go from 8-core to 12-core is the same as the cost to go from 6-core to 8-core. Being Scottish, it's hard for me to swallow that jump to 8-core unless it is truly needed. (Apologies to those Scots who really want the 8-core or 12-core without reservations.)

Would be easier if Apple's price jumps were more reflective of the power jumps but sometimes it seems marketing departments only like to add numbers, like units sold, and don't want to complicate their prices by using multiplication except when it applies to increasing their margins.

I will trust what Peter will recommend though.

Rick Lang
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

1 TB flash memory

Is it really useful ? I mean, you won't put your rushes/renderings on that drive, probably only the OS, Apps, and projects, and with 32gb or 64gb you can have cache in memory. So I feel like 1TB is either too small (for 4K) or to big (for Apps)

I would, simplistically, have a total of 21 GHz central processing power. Going up to the 8-core 3.0 GHz option, gives me 24 GHz central processing power.

I don't think the math is that simple, but I could be mistaken.

I also agree that 1TB flash is a bit big, since you'll end up hanging a Pegasus2 or similar off the unit for large fast storage anyhow, no?

I ordered a 6-core machine back in December, but wondering if I should have gone with 8. If I change my order, Apple basically considers it a new order so you go to the end of the queue which is now in to March!

I also ordered the six core, based on the same logic. I just couldn't see spending so much more for "so little" gain. A bit of a leap of faith, I suppose.

1 TB flash memory

Is it really useful ? I mean, you won't put your rushes/renderings on that drive, probably only the OS, Apps, and projects, and with 32gb or 64gb you can have cache in memory. So I feel like 1TB is either too small (for 4K) or to big (for Apps)

Pierre and Derek, you are correct in that most media will eventually reside in a TB2 RAID, either the Areca ARC-8050 TB2 or similar Promise Pegasus2 RAID which can support speeds comparable to the internal PCIe flash. Maybe I should rethink the 1TB flash but since flash is the only internal option, over the length of time I'll have the Mac Pro, I'm playing it safe that I'll find ways to make use of the space. If not 1TB, then certainly the 512 GB option, never would trust the 256 GB default will be adequate. My current boot drive uses more space than that and is a 500 GB partition.

A word of caution: flash drives are not to be thought of in terms of spinning hard disks. There's a rule of thumb that you should always have 10% free space on your system hard drive. I've broken that rule at times on older equipment going as low as a few percent free, and it still runs some activity without error but painfully slow. At least there wasn't a danger of losing data with a cramped HDD.

A flash drive and all SSDs, need room to breathe. At a bare minimum 6% to be able to internally manage the data and free blocks. Multi-cell SSDs usually write at half the speed when the first level cells are full. Not positive how Apple's PCIe flash works in that regard, but if it behaves similarly to MLC SSDs as I assume, then you may not want to fill the system drive more than half way to maintain that 1200 MB/s speed. So I'm ordering 1TB but planning to stay less than 50% full if that ensures faster performance.

I think the bump from 512 GB to 1 TB flash costs less than the bump from 6-core to 8-core. If that extra useful space on the flash drive allows the 6-core to support a 4K workflow, it will be worth it to me. If Apple had gone with the faster E5-2667v2 3.3 GHz 8-core processor that Intel offers, then it would have seen people jumping on the 8-core option for best value with Intel's price of $2,057 versus $1,723 for the E5-1680v2 3.0 GHz 8-core processor that Apple selected. That faster 8-core also adds QPI 8 GT/s just like the 12-core. Better value.

For comparison E5 v2 Xeons:
1620v2 3.7 GHz 4-core 10 MB cache no QPI (Intel QuickPath Interconnect) $294
1650v2 3.5 GHz 6-core 12 MB cache no QPI $583, Apple bump from 4-core $500
1680v2 3.0 GHz 8-core 25 MB cache no QPI $1,723, Apple bump from 4-core $2,000
2697v2 2.7 GHz 12-core 30 MB L3 QPI 8 GT/s costs $2,614, Apple bump from 4-core $3,500.

Maybe I'm being unfair to Apple as the 8-core more than doubles the L3 cache and the cost of the 8-core selected is quite a bit more than the 6-core. But still no QPI. Seems like Intel may be asking too much for the 1650 processor.

I'd appreciate hearing from anyone with a new Mac Pro who has nearly filled their flash system drive just as a test to see how it performs that way.

Rick Lang
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

What about for 4K?

Have you guys that are ordering more than 2 nMacPros checked out the Nvidia Grid VCA? That tech seems promising.

Move to the new MacPro. Until we complete our testing and have a formal config guide, we recommend the 8 Core D700 with 16GB system ram, 32GB is even better. You will need a ThunderBolt disk array, not because the SSD is slow.. quite the opposite its fantastically fast.. but its small.

The 6 Core D700 is likely ok too for HD/2K work. Certainly we recommend the dual D700 GPUs for many reasons not the least is they are fast!

The BMD UltraStudio 4K is ThunderBolt connected for your grading monitor.
Peter

Thanks Peter.

Where could one expect to see DaVinci's performance drop with the 6 core D700 machine compared to the 8 core? Is there a limited amount of nodes and node types that can be used? For instance, nodes with multiple color grades, effects, speed ramps, tracking, etc..? Or is that more on the GPUs?
I'm not too clear on where the GPU's processing power comes in and the CPU's processing power comes in when working in a Resolve 2k or 4k project with Red Epic footage.

[Peter Chamberlain]

Image processing is in GPU. Debayer also in GPU except current with RED as the SDK for GPU has not been implemented yet. Its CPU for now.

All compressed codecs, like ProRes and DNxHD and H.264 use CPU. So, slower and fewer core CPUs mean slower decompression, and compression.

The 6 core will likely be ok for ProRes/DNxHD, too slow for r3D and other camera codecs with larger image size.. and of course, more cores means faster rendering.

Peter

CPU decoding of 5K Epic footage is practically a lost cause. Even a 12-core can't quite do 'half-res good' in real time, and will fall off to ~4-5 fps on a full-res decode. Particularly with the existing Rocket practically end-of-life and the Rocket-X not generally available, Red really needs to hurry up and push GPU decoding into the SDK. It's insanely frustrating to be working with 4K raw F55 footage at full resolution with flawless real-time playback, and then switch back to an Epic project and have to drop all the way down to quarter res to get decent performance. It's baffling to me that this many years after Red shipped its first cameras the workflow is still a huge hassle compared with pretty much every other format.

It's baffling to me that this many years after Red shipped its first cameras the workflow is still a huge hassle compared with pretty much every other format.



red has been this way from the start nothing new here. Stick with Alexa and Sony

Will the new Mac Pro with a 6 Core D700 configuration support 2K work. I couldn't find an answer in the new config guide.

From the DaVinci Resolve 11 Config Guide page 11:

"When ordering your new MacPro we generally recommend the 8 core CPU with a minimum of 16GB system ram. The 6 core CPU is supported and viable for HD resolution clips. The 12 core CPU is ideal for when source clips are UHD or higher resolutions and include clip compression, such as clips from the RED and Sony camera range."

Thanks.

Will the new Mac Pro with a 6 Core D700 configuration support 2K work. I couldn't find an answer in the new config guide...

Seems to be a grey area. When you ask about 2K work, do you mean 2K-DCI or do you mean the 2400x1350 raw from the BMCC? Peter Chamberlain did mention near the beginning of this thread (before their testing was complete), that he thought the 6-core would handle HD/2K (presumably he meant 2K-DCI). But as you pointed out, there's no specific recommendation for 2400x1350 raw or 2K-DCI in the new Resolve configuration guide for the Mac. If you have the budget, I think it is best to order the 8-core with D700 when you go above HD, although the 6-core with D700, should be functional (but will not be realtime, especially when doing temporal noise reduction).

Rick Lang
Sent using Tapatalk HD

Hi Rick,

I was thinking about 2K 2048x1556 10 bit log DPX files from scanned film.

Thanks,
Ian