MacPro

selittle

I am looking into getting a mac pro. Is there any benefit to getting more cores or less. Does isadora use a lot of multi-threading? What would one suggest as far as number of cores?

mark

Dear @selittle,

The Mac version of Isadora uses AVFoundation to play movies, and this makes good use of all the cores. Still, your biggest "bang for the buck" will be to get the fastest SSD's you can manage. Given Isadora's now strong reliance on the GPU, I cannot give a definitive answer regarding performance improvement with more cores.

@Fubbi: you've used Mac Pros a lot.. any advice?

Best Wishes,

Mark

fubbi

Hi

the biggest advantage of the macpro is of course its many thunderbolt ports (6). If you want to have a lot of video channels going out you cant beat the mac pro. For example, 4 channels of HAP out plus a control monitor is no problem.

As far as gl shaders go, I am currently sending 4x1920 to a virtual stage with edge blending. thats 7680x1080 and I am running at a solid 60fps and plenty of cycles.

I had the same questions as you and I decided to go for the medium model. there are three graphic cards d300, d500 and d700\. I went for d500 with 6 cores.

OSX can only use one of the cards at the time (no support for crossfire). If you boot in windooze however, the cards will share the load.

Read more about that here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7603/mac-pro-review-late-2013/9

In conclusion, I think you would have to push this machine very hard to put it on its knees with 6 cores/d500.

Let me know if there is anything specific you want me to test for you

F

mark

@Fubbi - Thanks for sharing your expertise!

selittle

Thanks @fubbi and @mark! Much appreciated. It's looking like ill be getting the 6core version.

Skulpture

Just out of interest @fubbi do you rack mount your mac pro?

fubbi

@Skulpture. I just rack mounted two of them here in the project I am currently working on. What would you like to know?

Skulpture

Nothing in particular @Fubbi We were just talking in the office about how awkward they are to rack. There are only a couple of products to buy or DIY.

We did find this which looks cool but very expensive:

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/xmacproserver/index.html

Woland

@Skulpture That looks delicious. I can tell that at some point in the future, my bank account is going to take a major hit.

@selittle I have a Mac Pro (see my signature) and I love it. It's spectacular. I have, however, been thinking about investing in a SSD Raid setup for it. I have also been looking at the [Thunderbolt Station 2](http://www.caldigit.com/thunderboltstation2/) as a nice way to expand upon it.

fubbi

@Skulpture very fancy. Here how mine was mounted with velcro straps- Beijing style

Skulpture

Good old velcro!

crystalhorizon

@fubbi love that mount ))

DusX

@fubbi

nice work.