SSD for FCP

J

john deaver

Well-known member
Anyone ever try a solid state drive as an OS or scrach disk (not for storing media but render files and whatnot)
I've got a mac pro that's a bit long in the tooth and looking to get some more life out of the ole girl

thanks in advance
John Deaver
 
Sure been running one in my Mac Book Air for a while now. Not exactly a night and day difference though. A faster hard drive= more reliable playback and less dropped frames. But you won't notice much difference in overall speed or render speed. Those rely more on the GPU, RAM and Processor speed. I'd suggest adding more RAM. And if you're already at or above 8GB- grab a faster graphics card or save up for a new processor.

Noah
 
NoahK said:
... And if you're already at or above 8GB- grab a faster graphics card or save up for a new processor.

Noah
Click to expand...

Hmmmm
well its a 2.6 dual core 2 duo (thats 4 non hyperthreding cores) with 6 gigs of ram. bought over three years ago and at the time she was the 2nd fastest one they made and my wife nearly had a stoke when i told her how much it was.

at this point i think i wait for the do-deca core machines to come out and use my curent one to manage my Drobo and the network duties.

thanks
John
 
john deaver said:
Hmmmm
well its a 2.6 dual core 2 duo (thats 4 non hyperthreding cores) with 6 gigs of ram. bought over three years ago and at the time she was the 2nd fastest one they made and my wife nearly had a stoke when i told her how much it was.

at this point i think i wait for the do-deca core machines to come out and use my curent one to manage my Drobo and the network duties.

thanks
John
Click to expand...


You can always sell it and buy a new Imac quad core i7, that new Imac would run circles around your Mac Pro. It has the new i7 Quad core processor , 512mb graphics card , and even supports up to 16gbs of Ram.
 
Cieloent said:
You can always sell it and buy a new Imac quad core i7, that new Imac would run circles around your Mac Pro. It has the new i7 Quad core processor , 512mb graphics card , and even supports up to 16gbs of Ram.
Click to expand...

I had thought about that but it is $2,000 for the imac (no doubt a great price for what you get (including a 27inch display)) but i don't know if i will get three years or more like i did out of my mac pro. Also the sweet spot on the mac pro i think is always the base model ( considering price and performance) so for just a bit more i could get another mac pro. And the ability to put a real HDMI/HD SDI output card to monitor what I'm doing

I didn't really want to get another "help me chose a new mac" thread going but i am really jazzed about a new 6 core (12 threads) computer. Especially as when i first got this one i was just getting started using final cut studio and now I'm into Color and am About to tackle Motion.
 
Cieloent said:
You can always sell it and buy a new Imac quad core i7, that new Imac would run circles around your Mac Pro. It has the new i7 Quad core processor , 512mb graphics card , and even supports up to 16gbs of Ram.
Click to expand...

However, the graphics card isn't upgradeable beyond the initial purchase, it uses a 2.5 inch internal HDD drive without a way to add a second internal drive, has no eSATA expansion and one Firewire bus.

Cannot add any PCI-E cards or any other expansion.

Raw power isn't necessarily the only factor in editing.

The i7 processors will be available for the MacPro, and that would be a great purchase.
 
David S. said:
However, the graphics card isn't upgradeable beyond the initial purchase, it uses a 2.5 inch internal HDD drive without a way to add a second internal drive, has no eSATA expansion and one Firewire bus.

Cannot add any PCI-E cards or any other expansion.

Raw power isn't necessarily the only factor in editing.

The i7 processors will be available for the MacPro, and that would be a great purchase.
Click to expand...


Actually you are incorrect about the hard drive. The New Imac use 3.5" hard drives and no longer use any Laptop parts, this goes for HD, Graphics Cards and Memory. Also the one fire bus is not a problem as you can easily daisy chain well over 50 devices to one firewire bus.


The eSATA really does not matter because it is still depending on the strength of yor computer. So an eSata on a MBP would still be slower than a firewire 800 on an IMAC. Now on a Mac Pro then yes that would be the fastest.

Why would you need any more expansion slots? All you use is USB and Firewire that's more then enough for anything.

The Current graphics card that is in the Imac ( top of the line ) can output more then enough amazing quality with years to come. I am still working with an old 8600 128 in my MPB which till this day ( even a bit slow at times ) allows me to still deliver professional material.

iMac...

# 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7
# 4GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM
# 1TB Serial ATA Drive
# ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB
# 8x double-layer SuperDrive
# Apple Magic Mouse

$2199


Mac Pro Quad...

# One 2.66GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
# 3GB
# 640gb 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
# Nvidia gt 120 512mb
# One 18x SuperDrive


$2499


So you would be paying $300 more for a slower computer with less ram and hard drive space. Now you need to factor the Mac Pro does not come with a wireless network card so you need to buy that. Also you need a monitor and countless other things.

Truth be told at the end of the day the Mac Pro is going to cost you about $500-1000 more just to match what the Imac comes with already.

Sure the Mac Pro allows you to hook up multiple graphics cards, more ram, more internal hds, etc. but it's going to cost you well into the $3k+ mark to get it fully functioning like that.

IMO and it is only that an IMO the Imac 27" i7 is the best desktop computer for the price and options that apple currently offers. a 27" i7 quad core Imac is no slouch of a computer and can probably fly trough most things you throw at it.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for correcting me on the 3.5 inch drives.

1. iMac is limited to one internal drive. Can't add a second drive. MacPro permits four or more internal SATA drives that perform better than external Firewire drives.

2. I don't recommend daisy chaining FW devices. (Good read: http://www.adamwilt.com/Tidbits.html#FireWireFrustrations)

3. iMac doesn't support second optical drive.

4. I use Matrox CompressHD for accelerated h.264 encoding, a Sonnet eSATA card, and an additional PCI-E firewire/USB card. iMac doesn't support any capture cards from BM or AJA.

5. Top of line video card for Macs is a nvidia 4800 that supports RT in many Adobe apps. No iMac support.

My dual quad core with additional RAM cost about $3K without video card upgrade.

But I have numerous ways to upgrade it.

Again, processing power is not the only factor in this decision.
 
David S. said:
Thanks for correcting me on the 3.5 inch drives.

1. iMac is limited to one internal drive. Can't add a second drive. MacPro permits four or more internal SATA drives that perform better than external Firewire drives.

2. I don't recommend daisy chaining FW devices. (Good read: http://www.adamwilt.com/Tidbits.html#FireWireFrustrations)

3. iMac doesn't support second optical drive.

4. I use Matrox CompressHD for accelerated h.264 encoding, a Sonnet eSATA card, and an additional PCI-E firewire/USB card. iMac doesn't support any capture cards from BM or AJA.

5. Top of line video card for Macs is a nvidia 4800 that supports RT in many Adobe apps. No iMac support.

My dual quad core with additional RAM cost about $3K without video card upgrade.

But I have numerous ways to upgrade it.

Again, processing power is not the only factor in this decision.
Click to expand...



You can remove the Dvd drive from the Imac and put another HD in there for a total of two internal drives. Just because you don't recommend daisy chaining hds does not mean I nor myself have never had a problem doing it.

As a matter of fact it's done almost all of the time and everywhere I have worked. You keep stating the notion of using express cards to speed .h264 when the reality is the i7 processors already have this feature built in.

As a matter of fact I can almost guarantee 99% that an Imac i7 is faster than your current Mac Pro. Speed is a combination of GPU and CPU so while yes you can put more graphics cards in the Mac Pro that does not make it faster.

In reality the Mac Pros use processors that are intended for servers so speed is really not there strong point anyway. It's more of an having a lot of things going on at once. Finally processing power is all that should matter.

When you have a clip to render that is dependent on your CPU that's all that matters. When you are finalizing your project it's your CPU that is doing over 90% of the work load.


The ONLY reason I can see about getting a MAC PRO is if you worked in a facility that just needed all of the extra connections and gear, but as a one man show and a stand alone workstation IMO I just don't see it.

Personally me though I love working on Laptops, being able to go anywhere and edit while I'm working means that much to me. Even if I have to wait an extra minute or two the portability makes up for it.

When MAc Pro updates their product line things will change , but as of now the Imac i7 is simply a faster computer. That beast supports up to 16gbs of ram which is insane. I would replace the internal HD with an SSD and use an external firewire 800 for dumping my projects.

Would love to have Sata and that's where Mac Pro wins but then the Imac processes faster so in the end it's almost like a tie. Anyways I can't afford either right now, so let me stop dreaming and get back to work
:undecided
 
Ahem- close perhaps but not quite...

RED BAR means FASTEST:

i7_cine.gif


i7_geek.gif


More results:

http://www.barefeats.com/imi7.html

Noah
 
CompressHD from Matrox is a dedicated PCI-E board for encoding video footage to blu ray streams.

It's not a decoding board to play video.

As to guarantees in speed, Rob Morgan's site that Noah provides indicates that the i7 iMacs are significantly less powerful that Mac Pros, certainly for 8 cores and also for 4 cores.

What is significant as well are the CompressorHD testing where the MP is significantly faster.

iMac i7s are great machines, and a great value.

But I'll take a MacPro any day due to speed, versatility, expansion capabilities, etc.
 
i am using a decked out Mac Pro 2.93ghz fully loaded and it is sweet. about 4 months ago i bought the 27" iMac, 8gigs ram for one of my kids and it is very impressive. he is runing CS5 and does lots of photoshop and does gaming also. until the i7 the iMacs were nice machines for general family and lightweight editing but this i7 is pretty serious.

to me its a take the money and run computer. $2.200.00 is a bargain for the performance you get assuming you want an apple.

i personally wouldnt use one becuase i like to have the xtra HD's loaded and more ram potential plus options to upgrade the GPU...like the nVidia's for the Mercury playback engine, but if you only want to spend a little over 2k then this is a serious computer with a fabulous display. best bang for the buck that apple has ever had IMO.

david
www.davidprobst.com
 
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