Mac Pro - higher Single Core Speed or more Cores

[bernband]

Hey,

I am new here ;-)
I need a new mac and think about getting a Mac Pro.
I have large Sessions @96kHz, my main job is arranging and producing. (not mixing)

Would you go for the 6 Core 3,5 or for the 10 Core 3,0??

Thanks
Bern

[Horns-Up]

Working with Pro Tools for some time now, I can see that it is a multicore application that will use all the cores you throw at it...
As a systems engineer I can tell you that we no longer look at CPU sockets and cores, but rather at all available compute power.
In your case you are thinking about 6 x 3.5GHz or 10 x 3Ghz...
Math here is very simple... with 6 core systems you get the total compute power of 21Ghz while with the 10 core system it is 30GHz.
Just my 2 cents.

[midnightrambler]

Originally Posted by Horns-Up

it is a multicore application that will use all the cores you throw at it...

Well you wouldn't know sometimes, e.g. the excruciating amount of time it takes to render X-Form elastic audio.

[Horns-Up]

You are right...
I am not sure if all functions of PT are multicore "aware"... I based my comment on what I can see while using it.

[JCBigler]

Split the difference. Get an 8-core. That's what I did for our new workstation at the theatre. Especially if you are using HDX, I don't think your native processing is going to be the bottle neck. .

[john1192]

Originally Posted by bernband

Hey,

I am new here ;-)
I need a new mac and think about getting a Mac Pro.
I have large Sessions @96kHz, my main job is arranging and producing. (not mixing)

Would you go for the 6 Core 3,5 or for the 10 Core 3,0??

Thanks
Bern

HI, can you give us any more info on the rest of your system ?? what are you using now, computer and pro tools wise .. etc ..

[Darryl Ramm]

The Mac Pro Trashcan is old, lacks PCIe or internal storage expansion and is only Thunderbolt 2 and only USB 3.0/3.1 Gen 1. Apple has admitted it was a mistake and are coming out with something modular/expandable. I would wait, buy a Cheesegrater or build a Hackintosh, or at most a used Trashcan that can be resold again at lower loss when the new one ships.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[JCBigler]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

The Mac Pro Trashcan is old, lacks PCIe or internal storage expansion and is only Thunderbolt 2 and only USB 3.0/3.1 Gen 1. Apple has admitted it was a mistake and are coming out with something modular/expandable. I would wait, buy a Cheesegrater or build a Hackintosh, or at most a used Trashcan that can be resold again at lower loss when the new one ships.

Or switch to Windows and buy a ProtoolsPC that has twice the horse power for half the cost.

[Bob Olhsson]

All things being equal, faster core speed trumps the number of cores.

That said for audio, it's really about floating point calculations per second so you always want the latest CPU generation. An older 12 core can be significantly less powerful than a newer 4 core having the very same speed spec.

Multicore awareness is as big of a requirement for each individual plug-in as it is for the host application.

[PowerofEight]

I have access to some pretty high-end hardware (how and why is not important) on the workstation and server level and I have conducted this experiment many, many times. I've tried all sorts of set ups, dual cpus, single cpu with high ghz count, single cpu high core count and lower ghz count.


More cores less ghz, or Less cores more ghz??? It all comes down to how the APPLICATION is utilizing multi-cores/multi-threads. It also comes down to how clean the coding of the application is and what technologies are being taken advantage of.

Actually, by the end of the week I'll be conducting the same experiment one more time since Windows Pro for Workstations now allows us to utilize 4 socket CPUs on the motherboard on the workstation level instead of needing a server OS.

When it comes down to it, although pro tools supports high multi-core setups, when rendering, sometimes I'll see 20% usage across all cores which tells me, the thread counts are splitting up but are not being utilized to the max for each core.

But if you have a 16 core / 32 thread xeon cpu at 2ghz /core vs a 6 core at 3.7ghz a core (i7-8700k) and 4.7ghz burst, I'm going to take the lesser core count at the faster speed to outperform it in pro tools. I'm not coding for pro tools, but it seems that pro tools performs better at faster core than high core/lower ghz. Again, I'm pretty sure this is code-related.

But if for example, you are using Vegas 15, or doing 3d or type of video encoding that utilizes ALL cores to their maximum (Vegas 15 absolutely does as it EXTREMELY CPU intensive) than multicore is the way to go.

I also have reason to believe given the freshness of AMD ryzen / threadripper, pro tools does not get even close to taking full advantage of these technologies despite the insane core /ghz count. (Vegas is a program that does seem to do so)

This is a subject actually take a lot of interest in, since I don't believe what I read and I have a coffee lake 8700k coming in this week to test and see how it handles the rendering process in pro tools and vegas.

I'll be testing a quad cpu vs dual cpu, vs single cpu (high ghz) vs single cpu (high core) etc etc.

Should make for some interesting results. My hypothesis is that the coffee lake will end up winning with its insane core speeds.

We will see...