Upgrading Mac Pro for 4k editing

boosh

boosh

Well-known member
Hey guys, I would really appreciate some advice from anyone out there with some knowledge of upgrading a 2009 mac pro for editing in 4k. I purchased a 8 core mac pro desktop in 2009 with the following spec:

Quad core Intel Xeon
Processor speed: 2.26 GHz
Memory: 6GB
NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 graphics card
Running OS X 10.5.8

I'm currently using FCP6 with plugins like MB and Twixter. I'm looking to upgrade the system now as I've been using this for the past five years and feel its a little antiquated but also because I want to edit 4k stuff which FCP6 doesn't support.

So basically I want to run something like Final Cut X or a version of Premiere Pro which supports 4k.

I wonder how to go about this upgrade as I cant install final cut X on my current system. From my understanding I need to upgrade the operating system to something newer but also stuff like Ram and graphics card needs upgrading too to be able to then purchase something like Final Cut X?

Any help and recommendations would be hugely appreciated.

Thanks!
 
Buy the fastest new Mac you can afford, with the most RAM you can afford, and put together a large fast Thunderbolt raid for editing.

Either FCP X or Premiere Pro are good choices, I use both.
 
Surely purchasing a new Mac with the highest possible spec is completely unnecessary. My current Mac runs just like the day I bought it. All I want to do is edit 4k footage. I don't do CGI work so I would deem purchasing a whole new system unnecessary.
 
I have the same Mac. I have no trouble editing 5k Red or 2k Alexa with it. I upgraded the GFX card to a GTX 570, upped the RAM to 32GB and have an 8 drive, 24TB RAID connected via an Areca 1882 SAS card. I also have a Decklink Extreme 3D card.

I made all of those investments long before the new Mac pro was announced, though. My graphics card and capture card are no longer made, replaced by cheaper, more powerful ones.

Face it, our macs are 5 years old, the equivalent of a coal fired steamer next to the new Mac Pro's fusion drive, or even a fission powered iMac or MBP, all equipped with Thunderbolt. How much do you want to invest in a computer that you will probably need to replace anyway sometime in 3 years? This is the world we live in and the industry we work in.
 
Thanks Arnie, I think upgrading the spec should work fine for me for quite a while. My Mac Pro has run flawlessly since I purchased it. I can't see myself requiring anything more powerful than 4k for at least another 5 to 10 years. Appreciate the words of wisdom.
 
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I guess I'm a little spoiled then, as I have the same mac Pro, but just use it for legacy projects requiring FCP 7. And when I do have to use it, it feels like I have used a time machine to take me back to the stone age, as it is painfully slow!!!

Even my new 27" iMac runs circles around that old Mac Pro.

And hey, if you can get 15 years use out of a computer, more power to you!
 
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arniepix said:
I have the same Mac. I have no trouble editing 5k Red or 2k Alexa with it. I upgraded the GFX card to a GTX 570, upped the RAM to 32GB and have an 8 drive, 24TB RAID connected via an Areca 1882 SAS card. I also have a Decklink Extreme 3D card.

I made all of those investments long before the new Mac pro was announced, though. My graphics card and capture card are no longer made, replaced by cheaper, more powerful ones.

Face it, our macs are 5 years old, the equivalent of a coal fired steamer next to the new Mac Pro's fusion drive, or even a fission powered iMac or MBP, all equipped with Thunderbolt. How much do you want to invest in a computer that you will probably need to replace anyway sometime in 3 years? This is the world we live in and the industry we work in.
Click to expand...

Curious Arnie, if you started with a pretty stock 2009 Mac Pro today would you put all that money into upgrades again or would you buy a new Mac Pro or even a higher end iMac?
 
adkimery said:
Curious Arnie, if you started with a pretty stock 2009 Mac Pro today would you put all that money into upgrades again or would you buy a new Mac Pro or even a higher end iMac?
Click to expand...
I would certainly not get an old, pre cylinder mac pro today, unless it was a 12 core on a really steep discount. I might consider building a hackintosh, though. It would all depend on the specifics of what I wanted to do.

If I knew I was going to do a lot of 4k finishing, I'd either go with a mac pro cylinder and an expansion chassis, or I'd build a hackintosh (or maybe switch to windows/linux, depending on the toolset.)

Day to day editing in the studio? Big honking iMac, with Tbolt capture card to my monitor & Tbolt RAID.

Out in the field? Mac Book Pro with a Tbolt capture card for video/audio monitoring and a Tbolt RAID.
 
Boosh, you are pretty tapped out with your current setup. I had the same setup as you last year until I got into a used 12-core 3.33GHz when the switch was announced.
Quadro 4000 with CUDA GPU acceleration (very buggy),
and 32GB of RAM.

I can relate to your desire to get as much out of your setup as possible. But tech like this has built-in obsolescence, sadly. Be careful, before you spend too much money on upgrading, to compare the relative costs of buying new. It's too easy to bleed money a few $100 at a time (or £100, in your case), without realizing that you've caught up with what you would have spent on a newer system that works better.

There's really nothing more you can do to your system besides getting the Quadro 4000 for Mac card, still the only GPU capable of accelerating your renders on a Mac, and upping your RAM to 16 (anything more probably won't help unless you're running multiple programs). But with just a Quad-core Xeon at its heart, I'm not sure I could recommend that track wholeheartedly.

Good luck, whatever you decide! If you can live with the performance your setup gives you, then you're all set anyway.
 
Thanks for the recommendation guys. I think it sounds best to invest in something new and get rid of my old mac. What do you guys recommend? Honestly, i'm not going to be doing tons of 4k editing but I need something capable of handling it well when I do. I dont do any CGI work or animation so I need something with capability of editing 4k in premiere and fcpx. Thanks guys.
 
If I may throw in my 2 cents?

We finished a 12 minute short film, shot in 5k on RED Epic last year using a 2008 8-core 2.8 Ghz Mac-pro with 10GB of RAM. We edited most of the time in Final Cut X with proxies and then finished the film in 2k. It handled the film GREAT and really never slowed down. I decided to make the plunge with a used 2008 Mac Pro I purchased for $700 on eBay with 8-core 3.0GHZ, 14GB of RAM, and a 5770 1GB GPU. I upgraded to a SSD for the boot drive, and added some 1TB media-drives. I regularly edit long length 1080p projects, and have done some 4k work as well. One of the nice things is how well Final Cut X does at memory and system management. You'll be shocked how much faster it is than the older versions of FCP.

If I ALREADY had a 2009 Mac Pro like you do I would look into several things before purchasing a new Mac-Pro. I think a memory upgrade (relatively cheap), GPU upgrade (a little more expensive) and a boot SSD would be three things you could probably do for around $500-$600 that would infuse several more years of life into that machine. Then you'll be able to get a used cylinder at that point.

Just my thoughts.
 
Having built myself a custom PC a few years ago, I'm considering building a Hackintosh instead of buying a new Mac. Only reason I stayed away from it is because I've read many stories about incompatible hardware...but there are tons of successful builds on the tonymacx86 forum.

i7 4770k 3.4Ghz Quad Core, GTX760 2GB, and 12GB RAM w/ 2x 500GB for media, and 128gb SSD for boot. You guys think this is a pretty solid setup for HD and possibly some UHD in the near future?
 
Brandon Rice said:
If I ALREADY had a 2009 Mac Pro like you do I would look into several things before purchasing a new Mac-Pro. I think a memory upgrade (relatively cheap), GPU upgrade (a little more expensive) and a boot SSD would be three things you could probably do for around $500-$600 that would infuse several more years of life into that machine.
Click to expand...

Exactly what I did a few years ago. SSD for the boot drive, graphics cards that aren't "officially supported" but work great for cheap, some RAM, and a couple regular drives striped together for a RAID. Read up on the graphics cards and you'll see that's where a lot of the speed can be had for cheap, especially if you find a card on Craigslist or eBay. The PC gamers are a great source for this since they're constantly swapping graphics cards.
 
Thanks for giving me a few ideas on this guys. I see my options as the following:

-Buy new system that is capable of editing 4k - Are the new Mc Pro cylinders my only real option here? and if they are can I get away with the quad core version?

-Update my current system to standard that can handle 4k which looks to cost around £1000

-Purchase a friends used 12 core mac, with 24gb ram, usb 3 installed and which I know handles 4k fine for £1700

Any further advise would be appreciate. Thanks again.
 
If this is a hobby and just for fun, spend the little bit and update your old box. But if you are in business, put that money toward a new computer. We generally buy new computers in 3 year cycles. We have switched from Mac Pros to the highest end iMacs. When we buy a new 27" iMac, we then use the older one as a second monitor for the new one, giving us dual 27" monitors at each edit position along with a broadcast monitor for color correction and a larger client preview monitor.
 
This is a great discussion...I am in the same boat as boosh....more input is more than welcome...
 
Thanks for the advice David. It is for business. I've had this mac pro for 5 years so I'm thinking the mac pro cylinder would be a good option. Just need to work out which version to get. Obviously I want it to run smoothly but don't want to spend extra money on 6 core if I can edit 4k nicely on the 4 core version.
 
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