Best Mac Pro for PTHD 12 with Native PCIe Card

[LoZion]

Originally Posted by Barry Johns

I can help you with it if you decide to go that route. I strongly recommend it!!!!!

Interesting, tell us more?

[Barry Johns]

Originally Posted by LoZion

Interesting, tell us more?

Start here, and don't hesitate to PM me with as many questions has you have. I have upgrade a 2009 quad core to a 6 core and a 2009 8 core to a 12 core.

http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=370850

[LoZion]

Txs!

[iBuildMacs]

Hello. I'm sure you already purchased the Mac Pro since I'm responding to a two year old post. But since this post appeared when I searched Google, I'm sure other Pro Tools users see this post for advice.

All applications carry out various tasks. Some tasks are single threaded (or frequency bound), which means they utilize only one core. For these tasks, it's important to have a high clock speed. Other tasks take advantage of multiple cores.

We performed an experiment on a 2010 Mac Pro Model 5,1 Quad-core 2.8GHz running Pro Tools 12. We ran a session and kept an eye on the CPU usage monitor. We then upgraded the processor to a 12-core 2.66GHz, while keeping everything else the same. Running the same session, the CPU usage was about 30% less. This is great because the CPU was not bogged by the session, thus allowing the system to perform more efficiently. Plus, it will allow for larger sessions.

For Pro Tools, having a moderate clock speed is fine, but we found that the CPU cores definitely make a difference when it comes to the Mac Pro tower.

If you go with the Mac Pro cylinder, going with less cores is fine as another member above stated. This is because the processors are of newer Intel Xeon generation, which have overall greater performance.

In terms of memory, the general recommendation is to have 3-6GB of memory per processor core. For a 12-core, 32GB is fine...or 64GB if you have very large sessions. Virtual instruments eat up lots of memory. If you have virtual instruments, getting up to 96GB or 128GB is not a bad idea.

In terms of storage, we recommend two to three drives:
Primary (SSD Suggested): operating system, applications, and plug-ins
Secondary (SSD or HD): sessions
Tertiary (HD is fine): sound libraries

For the graphics card, the standard model is typically fine. If you are running the video engine within Pro Tools, the graphics performance should be considered. The standard ATI Radeon 5770 1GB graphics card in the Mac Pro 5,1 is fine. However, if you have the Mac Pro 4,1 with the GT120 or the Mac Pro 3,1 with the 2600XT, upgrading is a good idea. On the Mac Pro cylinder, getting the D500 is a good idea. Sometimes of my Pro Tools customers have informed me the low end D300 GPU on the cylinder can get choppy with video.

We have prepared hundreds of Mac Pros for recording. If you have any questions, let us know.

[LoZion]

Running a PCI-E SSD as a boot drive will give you great speed for loading sessions and caches, bootup, etc

[SDDP]

If someone could be so kind as to send this entire Thread/Post to Apple Developers

So someone in their boardroom can see the real life need for these modular cheese graters again.
And not the Trashcan that is IMHO trash. Anyone would have to spend double the price just in a chassis and peripherals, cables, power cords, more desk space, fan noise, heat, etc. to do what these last generation Westmeres did right out of the box.

[Darryl Ramm]

Apple has basically already admitted they screwed up the trashcan, and we are now awaiting what is presumably a new generation of expandable Mac Pro computers.


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