Greg Huson wrote:Seeking system build advice from those with actual practical experience. My question is - will I get significantly better performance (especially once I start adding blurs and NR) from swapping one of the 680s for Titan? Or have I reached the point of diminishing returns? Building a PC is an option, but I don't have a big gear budget for this project, and 'no ProRes render' is kind of a deal killer from my POV.
My experience: move on & presently Windows is the only option. (New Mac Pros end 2018 perhaps; iMac Pro with blower in your face come Xmas 2017). Take a look at
https://forums.macrumors.com/forums/mac-pro.1/ This same discussion about cheese graters goes on endlessly (and 'on the cheap').
A better stop gap may be a Mac Pro 6,1 if you really need to stay with Mac OS. D700 only, possibly second hand? The 'new' prices for such an old spec from Apple are frankly, unconscionable. Hackintosh, absolutely not. Is the worst of both worlds and provides very limited (older) hardware choices for everything, from audio to GPUs.
To cut a longer story much shorter: over a coupe of years I expanded and finessed a very nice 12 core 3.33Ghz Mac Pro 5,1 as far as possible with Titan X (after a bunch of other GPUs); ditto SSD PCIe boot disk; all SSDs throughout including RAID, big Ram etc etc. Was still painful to use with 4k, FCPX & Resolve timelines (in particular, longer formats at say an hour or so). Shorter 4-5 min pieces, well maybe. Overall was a great waste of time and money.
After trialling Windows on Bootcamp during this same period, then doing quite a lot of follow-up research, I ended up with a Windows DP Xeon workstation. I did also consider X99 custom builds but the gaming /overclocking reference points became a little sticky and overall, unsatisfactory. Too many fan boys there. Workstations like the Dell T7910 or HP Z840 work very well indeed. Alternatively, a good custom build by someone that knows workstation MoBos vs. gaming machine assumptions. In the very near future, next gen Intels will change this again and are the basis for both new macs and new PCs. Thunderbolt 3 adaptation is the one to watch there, and especially on workstation MoBos.
Win 10 has been fine; the PC has serious grunt and the experience of working with 4k timelines is lightyears away from persevering with my Mac Pro 5,1 cheese-grater. Who knows, I may return to Apple end next year depending of what they offer in the Mac Pro 7,1.
My 2 cents anyways. I hope that helps.