Mac Pro for video editing and other graphics apps..

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roper512

Limp Gawd
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Apr 27, 2005
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Need some suggestions..

A friend of mine is going to be buying a new Mac Pro in the not too distant future and wants to know what the most important parts are for a computer mainly used for video editing and graphics apps like photoshop / illustrator / premiere / etc..

The prices of mac pros have really gone up and I'm surprised what they're charging for mac pro refurbs with only 1 gig of ram and a 7300GT nvidia card...

Despite that though.. We configured an 8-core mac pro with 8800GT video card and 2 gig ram for i think 2500..

What's the most important things for video editing? more RAM? Faster hard drives? better video card? (he will be doing some 3d stuff in after effects which can be accelerated i know)..

Thanks
 
RAM and big, fast hard drives are the crucial components of video editing and encoding. Will he need to use Windows via Boot Camp? If not, the pimp setup IMO would be the Apple RAID card with four SAS disks in RAID 0+1. But no Windows support, so if that's a requirement then the ARC/SAS option doesn't work (though you could get a 3rd-party RAID card that would).

As always, don't buy memory from Apple - go to Other World Computing or somewhere and save a ton of money on RAM. A 4GB (4x1GB) kit is $216 at OWC, compared to Apple's $500 for a 4x1GB kit (silly). Bear in mind that due to the Mac Pro's low fan speeds, you really do need memory specifically vetted for use in the Mac Pro (read: comically large RAM heat sinks)... Also because of how the MP handles memory interleaving, there's some performance to be gained installing RAM modules in quads.

Regarding the video card - I can't remember where I read it, but for video editing and encoding a Mac Pro with the Radeon card returned higher stream processing performance than one with the 7300 or 8800 nVidia card. That being said though, I don't think your friend would be displeased with the 8800. It's doing quite nicely for me, anyway (video editing/compositing, re-encoding, some light 3D, photo retouch, gaming, etc.).
:)

-Brian
 
Okay, so you would say he could get away with quad core as opposed to the dual-quad core? Would he notice much difference between 4/8?

Thanks again,
Adam
 
Most apps don't even use 8 cores, so chances are he could get away with it. Future proofing, its a bad idea, but hell, most people don't have quads yet.
 
roper512 said:
Okay, so you would say he could get away with quad core as opposed to the dual-quad core? Would he notice much difference between 4/8?

Thanks again,
Adam
Click to expand...

Get the dual quad-core. If you price out how much that processor costs by itself, it's considerably cheaper to get a system with two already in it. To me, it doesn't make sense to spend x amount on a computer when for, relative to the price you're paying, a little bit more money gets you double the processing power.
 
Processor, RAM, and HDD are the most important for those types of tasks.

Video cards dont really do too much in those situations except for preview/playback.
 
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