Mac Pro question: more cores or faster processor?

Chris Adams

Chris Adams

Active member
Hey guys, I don't really know where else to put this so hopefully someone here can help me.

I am in the market for a Mac Pro for all my FCP editing. I found a guy who can get me a great deal on a brand new 8 core 2.8GHz Mac Pro, but it is the older version before the "Nehalem" chips.

This computer will be right around the same price as purchasing a brand new quad core 2.93GHz Nehalem Mac Pro.

So what I need to figure out is, what is more important, more cores, or faster newer processor?

Thanks in advance.
 
I say faster processor. Programs don't tend to be able to take advantage of eight cores very readily, and the new processors give an important clock for clock calculation advantage. However, if you have programs in the future that do fully utilize more processor threads it might end up being superior. But I don't know exactly where development is on that, especially since most people don't use that many.
 
dont get the quad core. You're limited to only 8gb of ram (i believe). Ram is as important as processor and with the with previous mac pro, you can have both.
 
Ok so now I have two totally different answers and I am back to square one. I lived in Orlando for 2 years though..so I may have to lean towards nantnee's answer. Although I feel like 8GB of ram is quite a lot. I am currently working with only two though so...maybe one day I will need 32GB.

Anyone else?
 
The 2.8 is a better choice over the quad 2.93. As nantnee stated, the Quad is only limited to 4 RAM slots. While you can buy 4GB RAM chips, the price is outrageous right now. It's cheaper to stock up on RAM for the 8 core which has 8 slots. 8GB of ram is not much for Pro Apps such as Final Cut. Photoshop alone works best with at least 8GB to prevent page filing on the hard disk when the RAM runs out. You really want a minimum of 8GB. Once you start opening all your apps, you'll use it up. I recommend 12GB, but you can't ever have too much RAM. I've seen my Mac Pro 3.0 Clovertown use up all 32GB of RAM it has with LiveType/ FC6/ Color/ Compressor 3/ DVDSP/ CS3/ Firefox/ Safari all open and running.

Even right now I'm on a new 2.26 Nehalem 8 Core with 12GB, and It's over half being used with pretty much the same apps minus DVDSP, LiveType & CS3 running.


While it's true the 2.93 will be faster for most apps in use as of right now, to future proof yourself, the 8 core will be faster over the quad core.
Snow Leopard ( Due this Sept. ) and the much anticipated Final Cut Studio 3 will be 64bit and very muliti-core friendly. As of now, FCS2 is mostly 32bit. Which is why it's taking Apple over 2 years to rewrite the entire Final Cut suite and tailor it with Snow Leopard's new guts. ( and QuickTime X ) When FCS3 launches it will be faster on the 8Core. For sure.

So you can be faster on the quad for the next 4 months, or faster on the 8core for the next few years following.
 
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