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  #271  
Old 06-10-2020, 02:50 PM
Marsdy Marsdy is offline
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Default Re: New Mac Pro (7.1)

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Originally Posted by amiller View Post
Ok, I have a couple Q's and forgive me, I'm trying to catch up in this thread...

I might be able to swing a new Mac Pro and I'm wondering is anyone able to just migrate their current system over to the new computer? Or are you needing to do a fresh install?

Regarding the stock 580X video card - I am currently using two DVI outputs to my computer monitors. (I have a separate computer for my main video.) I think the 580X only has 1 DVI output? I'm not finding clear pics on that yet. If so, would it be ok to run an HDMI to DVI adapter to my 2nd computer monitor?

I'm thinking of the 2TB OWC 4M2 and a couple of 1TB Samsung 850/860 Pro for my sessions. Maybe moving my External FX library to an internal drive as well. That sound good?
I’m with Lucien, the W5700X is well worth the money providing you can spare the PCIe slot.

You might want to look at the Sonnet m.2 card
https://www.sonnettech.com/product/m...pcie-card.html
It’s x16 card so quite a lot faster than the x8 OWC 4M2 but if you only need two m.2 drives this might be academic. I wouldn’t bother with the Samsung Pro drives because the performance benefits just don’t justify the extra expense IMHO. I’m using 970 EVO Plus drives here and they are ridiculously fast.
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  #272  
Old 06-10-2020, 03:10 PM
amiller amiller is online now
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Default Re: New Mac Pro (7.1)

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Originally Posted by Marsdy View Post
I’m with Lucien, the W5700X is well worth the money providing you can spare the PCIe slot.

You might want to look at the Sonnet m.2 card
https://www.sonnettech.com/product/m...pcie-card.html
It’s x16 card so quite a lot faster than the x8 OWC 4M2 but if you only need two m.2 drives this might be academic. I wouldn’t bother with the Samsung Pro drives because the performance benefits just don’t justify the extra expense IMHO. I’m using 970 EVO Plus drives here and they are ridiculously fast.
Well I already have the drives in my current rig so just swapping them over, but I know what you mean. I will look into this though.
Edit to say, it looks like I can't swap those drives over.
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Last edited by amiller; 06-10-2020 at 05:55 PM.
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  #273  
Old 07-04-2020, 10:40 PM
juniperian juniperian is offline
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Default Re: New Mac Pro (7.1)

Open question to all MP7,1 owners:

Hard to compare unless you've tried different configurations, but I'm trying to decide which is better to buy:

16-core for higher clock speed?
28-core for more threads?

Use case is a combo of Pro Tools HDX2 for 5.1 (soon to be Atmos) film mixing (often with very high track counts/lots of plugins), plus Cubase for film composing with VEP on two servers (2012 Mac Pros) and well over 1000 midi tracks.

Currently gimping with a 3.5GHz 6-core trash can I've owned for over 7 years.

It would be nice to be able to run lots of VIs on the 7,1, and rely less on the external VEP servers. I can barely run a few instances of Kontakt on my 6,1 in Pro Tools, which is why I switched to Cubase for music.

I tried a 2.7GHz 12-core trash can a couple years ago with Pro Tools, but the lower clock speed created such a performance drop on various common processes that I couldn't stand the waiting. So I went back to the 3.5GHz 6-core. It's made me a little gun shy of slower clock speeds, and leery of the benchmark scores. But the idea of 28 cores is very appealing.

I know the Xeon-Ws are in a different world of efficiency from the trash cans, but is the 2.5GHz 28-core a lot less snappy than the 3.2GHz 16-core, or does the turbo boost make up for that? Do you think I'll be waiting more with the 28-core vs the 16 core on non-(or poorly)-multithreaded processes like AudioSuite? I've been searching the web for info, and it's very hard to get a sense of what's better. Any insight would be much appreciated!
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  #274  
Old 07-04-2020, 10:57 PM
LukeHoward LukeHoward is offline
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Default Re: New Mac Pro (7.1)

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Originally Posted by juniperian View Post
I know the Xeon-Ws are in a different world of efficiency from the trash cans, but is the 2.5GHz 28-core a lot less snappy than the 3.2GHz 16-core, or does the turbo boost make up for that? Do you think I'll be waiting more with the 28-core vs the 16 core on non-(or poorly)-multithreaded processes like AudioSuite? I've been searching the web for info, and it's very hard to get a sense of what's better. Any insight would be much appreciated!
Most here (myself included) think the 16 core is the sweet spot between clock speed and core count. It's also not as ridiculously expensive as the 28 core. I don't know how many owners of the 28 core there are running Pro Tools, so it might be harder to find data on this.
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  #275  
Old 07-05-2020, 09:33 AM
juniperian juniperian is offline
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Default Re: New Mac Pro (7.1)

16-core was my thought as well. Then I saw a couple videos of guys running huge sessions (albeit not Pro Tools) on 28-core machines. Cost is important, but this thing will be my workhorse for the next few years, and I tend to drive my machines pretty hard, so...

I suspect I'll be happy with either.
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  #276  
Old 07-05-2020, 10:23 AM
lucienpalmer lucienpalmer is offline
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Default Re: New Mac Pro (7.1)

I chose 16-core, too. For now.

Don’t forget, you can always upgrade the processors later. In two years, the 28 core chips will likely be less than half price.
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  #277  
Old 07-05-2020, 10:39 AM
juniperian juniperian is offline
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Default Re: New Mac Pro (7.1)

Very true. But of course at that point we'll want the next gen chips... if they're compatible...
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  #278  
Old 07-05-2020, 10:43 AM
lucienpalmer lucienpalmer is offline
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Default Re: New Mac Pro (7.1)

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Originally Posted by juniperian View Post
Very true. But of course at that point we'll want the next gen chips... if they're compatible...

Very true, and likely there will be some kind of “apple silicon” ARM processor tray swap available, too.

Let’s just hope we aren’t forced to do an entire motherboard swap for new chips. Probably cost $5k. Bleh. It’ll happen eventually.
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7,1 MacPro, 3.2GHz 16-core, OSX 10.15
S6 M40 48-5, panners, MPM,Dolby Atmos RMU
AJA Kona LHi, Sync HD
www.ToolshedAudioPost.com
www.TheToolshedStudio.com
Certified for Dolby Atmos Home Entertainment
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  #279  
Old 07-05-2020, 10:48 AM
juniperian juniperian is offline
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Default Re: New Mac Pro (7.1)

On the plus side, I bet the 7,1s will hold their resale value even better than the 5,1s and 6,1s.

How are you finding the responsiveness of the 16-core while running big PT sessions?
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  #280  
Old 07-05-2020, 11:26 AM
lucienpalmer lucienpalmer is offline
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Default Re: New Mac Pro (7.1)

Responsiveness is ridiculously amazing. During playback, I’m zooming in and out and editing at extremely fast speeds, and the timeline never skips. The graphics redrew of the zooming is extremely smooth. Part of that might be the upgraded MPX graphics.

I had one session that was hitting over 80% on my 5,1 12-core that hovers around 10% now.

Overall very happy. The only weird bugs or hiccups are directly related to Catalina.
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7,1 MacPro, 3.2GHz 16-core, OSX 10.15
S6 M40 48-5, panners, MPM,Dolby Atmos RMU
AJA Kona LHi, Sync HD
www.ToolshedAudioPost.com
www.TheToolshedStudio.com
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