New Apple Mac Pro

[crjeong]

Has anyone had the opportunity to use a new Mac Pro? I'm quite interested to know the difference between the rendering speeds of the new Quad-Core Intel Xeon and the old Quad-Core Power Mac G5.

[E_Tedeschi]

The official line from Apple is that they are faster than the Quad G5s by "up to 2X". Probably depends on the config and type of rendering:

http://www.apple.com/au/macpro/performance.html

I'd say it would put my Dual 2.0 to shame!!

[editboxer]

Originally posted by crjeong
Has anyone had the opportunity to use a new Mac Pro? I'm quite interested to know the difference between the rendering speeds of the new Quad-Core Intel Xeon and the old Quad-Core Power Mac G5.

I would suggest to wait a little bit more till the new softwares that support 64 bit computing are out (Photoshop, etc).
In the meantime, check these sites....
http://barefeats.com/quad06.html
http://barefeats.com/quad05.html

They may have the answers that you are looking for.

Editboxer

[rachelw]

Yeah, the lack of design applications is holding me back...

Also heard from a friend that they've had troubles trying to mount their LaCie drives....a formatting issue no doubt, however if it won't dock you can't exactly format it, anybody dealt with this? I haven't checked any forums yet (because for me it isn't yet a worry - I am waiting off for a little while)

[projectsplat]

I would approach them with caution at this stage of play.

After spending a week working with one of the G5 "Quads" a few months back, I came to the disappointing conclusion that my ageing 17" Powerbook was faster on a few Final Cut related tasks.

The issue with the new Dual-Core-Dual-Processor systems is that whilst the OS, and software is written to handle two processors, a lot of the functions were not written to handle four. This is where the whole thing falls in a heap.

For example, I tried a simple test like creating some titles in motion, then dropping them onto the timeline in FCP and rendering. on my powerbook, it took about 10 minutes to render (it was a bit complex). on the Quad, it indicated 2 hours to render - i stopped it at an hour and gave up.

after some thinking, I pulled up the activity monitor, and tried the render again. I noticed that only one processor was working at a time. it would go for about 30 seconds and then stop, and spend 15 seconds handing the task over to another processor, then it would go for 30 seconds, then stop and hand it over and so on.

now this is not the case with all of the software. quite a few of the functions in FCP were blindingly fast, but when some of them are slower than a 2 year old laptop, you have to worry a bit.

I will temper this post with the fact that the last time i tested this was about 6 months ago. there have been updates to Final Cut Studio since then, and the situation may have changed. my testing and research could be waaaay out of date - but I would caution those who are thinking about it to find one with Final Cut Studio loaded and give it a good thrashing before handing over your hard earned wedge.

cheers

al

[Emma_Molly]

That's interesting to know al, I'm about to start a project on a Quad 4 but with FCP 5.1.2. The computer was bought so that rendering /processing would be faster and to have the capacity for new software but if the 4 processors are going to slow it down that's a worry... it'll be interesting to know. Any one else had good / bad experiences with the Quad?

[editboxer]

I have been working on duals and it takes a looooong time to render...
Am quite happy with my Quad, no headaches. Doesn't crash as much ( my itsi-bitsy fingers are too quick), and as long as you have got the power (RAM, RAID, Right Amount of Money. etc.) there shouldn't be any problem. But that's just my experience.