Dear Friends,
There have been plenty of hardware-oriented discussion on this great forum, neither of which conclusive. So let me first explain why, and then... start another one, hoping some good souls from among fellow users and/or BMD moderators will provide me with the answers
OK, so it so happens that at the age of 63, I have to keep in mind the solid income from my main profession-related activity will cease in 2-3 years, after which I'll become semi-retired with all my energy and time devoted to digital content acquisition, editing/grading, and final product delivery. As in any art-related activity, my income will be considerably lower than it is now, when I still devote myself to a more stable profession in the area of engineering - but first of all, even if I'm lucky enough and manage to make good money on this currently just the second profession (or should I say passion or "serious hobby") - it will never be coming regularly as it does now Therefore, I've started to seriously consider leasing a high-end and as future-proof as only possible, workstation; if I start soon it will be paid-off completely by those 2 years or so...
At the moment, what I'm considering most seriously is a Supermicro Superserver 7048GR-TR. In the current DaVinci Resolve Configuration Guide 2x 12 cores are recommended as a minimum; I don't think I can afford that many cores - 2x 8 or even just 2x 6 cores is more realistic; if I'm doing fine I'll always be able to replace those modest Xeons with more powerful ones without a need for a whole new machine (which is the beauty of the dual-CPU server architecture). But I must admit I have no idea (neither is it mentioned in the Guide) how many GPUs to go with in order to get the best possible balance between the GPU vs. CPU performance... And this exactly is the main question for you guys (I'm sure more will come, but lets start with this most important ones as it's my experience eliminating bottlenecks is probably the one most important thing).
So - assuming my starting configuration would only have 16 CPU cores in total - how many Titan Xps cards should I start with? The motherboard in those servers have 4 PCI-E 3.0 x16 (double-width) slots, so - when (and if) I'm ever able to increase the total numbers of cores to say 20, I'll also be able to do so in the most cost-effective way, i.e. by simply adding one or two more identical GPU cards - but:
- how many Titan Xps would you advise to start with, assuming "just" 2x 8 CPU cores?
Just to make it easier for those willing to advise: my projects are mostly UHD (or DCI 4K) @50p (sometimes 25p); the source media - XAVC-I from my FS7 and Long-GOP from my GH5 (often replaced by the highest quality DNxHR or Prores when I'm able to use the GH5 with the Shogun Inferno). I grade for HDR10, and my grades and edits are not particularly heavy (at the moment - I bet that in the future, I will start using much more "sophisticated" grades)... Please share your thoughts; TIA
Piotr
There have been plenty of hardware-oriented discussion on this great forum, neither of which conclusive. So let me first explain why, and then... start another one, hoping some good souls from among fellow users and/or BMD moderators will provide me with the answers
OK, so it so happens that at the age of 63, I have to keep in mind the solid income from my main profession-related activity will cease in 2-3 years, after which I'll become semi-retired with all my energy and time devoted to digital content acquisition, editing/grading, and final product delivery. As in any art-related activity, my income will be considerably lower than it is now, when I still devote myself to a more stable profession in the area of engineering - but first of all, even if I'm lucky enough and manage to make good money on this currently just the second profession (or should I say passion or "serious hobby") - it will never be coming regularly as it does now Therefore, I've started to seriously consider leasing a high-end and as future-proof as only possible, workstation; if I start soon it will be paid-off completely by those 2 years or so...
At the moment, what I'm considering most seriously is a Supermicro Superserver 7048GR-TR. In the current DaVinci Resolve Configuration Guide 2x 12 cores are recommended as a minimum; I don't think I can afford that many cores - 2x 8 or even just 2x 6 cores is more realistic; if I'm doing fine I'll always be able to replace those modest Xeons with more powerful ones without a need for a whole new machine (which is the beauty of the dual-CPU server architecture). But I must admit I have no idea (neither is it mentioned in the Guide) how many GPUs to go with in order to get the best possible balance between the GPU vs. CPU performance... And this exactly is the main question for you guys (I'm sure more will come, but lets start with this most important ones as it's my experience eliminating bottlenecks is probably the one most important thing).
So - assuming my starting configuration would only have 16 CPU cores in total - how many Titan Xps cards should I start with? The motherboard in those servers have 4 PCI-E 3.0 x16 (double-width) slots, so - when (and if) I'm ever able to increase the total numbers of cores to say 20, I'll also be able to do so in the most cost-effective way, i.e. by simply adding one or two more identical GPU cards - but:
- how many Titan Xps would you advise to start with, assuming "just" 2x 8 CPU cores?
Just to make it easier for those willing to advise: my projects are mostly UHD (or DCI 4K) @50p (sometimes 25p); the source media - XAVC-I from my FS7 and Long-GOP from my GH5 (often replaced by the highest quality DNxHR or Prores when I'm able to use the GH5 with the Shogun Inferno). I grade for HDR10, and my grades and edits are not particularly heavy (at the moment - I bet that in the future, I will start using much more "sophisticated" grades)... Please share your thoughts; TIA
Piotr
Last edited by Piotr Wozniacki on Thu Mar 08, 2018 9:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
AMD TR 2990WX CPU | MSI X399 CARBON AC | 64GB RAM@XMP3200 | 2x RTX 2080Ti GPU | 4x 3TB WD Black RAID0 media drive | 3x 1TB NVMe RAID0 cache drive | SSD SATA system drive | AX1600i PSU | Decklink 12G Extreme | Samsung UHD reference monitor (calibrated)