Help! Suggestions for upgrading my Mac for FCPX

I have a Mac Pro from early 2008 and knowing technology, it's ancient. I plan to be working on FCPX as much as possible but I've noticed my MacBook Pro often handles the application better than my desktop tower. I'm going to make the decision between buying a new Mac or upgrading my current Pro but I'm concerned about the fact that it's 5 years old already.

It's an 8-core 3.0 Ghz with 8GB of Ram and a 1Gb graphics card.
I can double my ram and my graphics but it'll cost around $800 for the upgrade. The card I'm looking at in particular is the new 2.0gb EVGA 680. I believe my CPU is still at a competitive spec, but perhaps my GPU and RAM could still use a push to handle the effects and footage I throw at it.

I'd much rather spend a chunk of money on upgrades rather then a large chunk of money on a new computer. Would my upgrades have a strong effect on FCPX's performance or should I look a new computer altogether?

Athanc,
What GPU do you have now?
What OS version?
See these reviews by Barefeats…
www.barefeats.com/gpu680v.html
www.barefeats.com/gpu680v2.html
for some comparisons with the GTX680 vs other GPUs.
You can also see my reply to Seanus on similar topic here…
www.fcp.co/forum/10-third-party-products...body-out-there#24884
Hope this helps,
Greg

I'm running an NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 (512 MB) Graphics card, and the latest OS (10.8.3)

I checked out the article you posted and the card definitely appears to have some punch. Any thoughts on its effects on FCPX's performance?

Seriously - you could get more ram - you could get a new graphics card - but I really think you would be better off saving the money and investing in the future rather than in the past.

In my opinion you are never going to get a machine that runs FCPX really smoothly unless you bite the bullet and move forward onto the new generation of iMacs, both for their processors and their graphic cards and their ability to use Thunderbolt and USB3. storage and transfer devices.

I'm not saying that it's all plain sailing with these new machines but it is considerably better at handling FCPX than a 4 to 5 year old MacPro.

So for me it's been a great decision to upgrade to the new iMac. Like you I had a 2008 MacPro and I probably sunk $1000 into trying to get FCPX working better, this included Ram (22Gbs), A Radeon 5770 graphics card, a Flash drive etc etc.

Maybe if you just hang on in there you will be one of the people to buy a new MacPro if and when it comes out. I couldn't hang on any longer which is why I followed many peoples feedback and advice and bought the 27" iMac with the 3.4 processor and 32GB Ram.

Good luck

Thanks Mark,

I appreciate the brutal honesty I was afraid to hear. The damn Mac Pros are so expensive that you can imagine me hesitating at all costs to give up my machine. She's done a lot for me, rendered hours and hours of footage, processed hundreds of effects and exported a plethora of videos.

She's been a machine that I have a sentimental connection and pulling the plug is something I'm afraid of. I don't want to say goodbye and I don't want to dish out a couple of $K for the new one either. The RAM and GPU upgrades really looked to me like they could help give it some kick for another year or two. Alas, I'm no professional when it comes to system optimization.

I'm really not trying to be negative and I based my comments on my own experience. As always any decision will be based on how much money you can afford to lay out.

My question would be how bad is the performance on your machine at the moment and are you carrying out
all the standard day to day maintenance tasks such as using Digital Rebellions free app 'Preference Manager' and repairing disk permissions using Disk Utility.

Greg asked some specific questions about your set up and another thing I've learnt is that editors problems or issues with FCPX are very specific to their individual set up. Some have no problems at all. Not my experience.

Have you looked into using a proxy media workflow for your editing, I don't do this myself, but a lot of editors say it makes a huge difference.

Don't get me wrong, Mark, but in no way am I taking your advice as negative. I truly appreciate the time anyone takes to help me out with my issue and your advice was very honest and true. I guess my response sounded like I may have taken it the wrong way but I'm just trying to come to terms with the fact that having to buy a new computer may not only be a very probable reality, but it's the best option for me in the long run.

I'm going to continue to optimize my machine as best I can for now. My MacBook Pro (a 1-year old computer) demonstrates Geekbench scores significantly lower than my Mac Pro and yet still appears to run better. It could be a mix of the supported RAM (DDR2 for the Mac Pro) or the capabilities of a current graphics card. Clearly, specs and scores don't always tell the whole story and I'll try and see what can help me squeeze the last bit of juice out of my old battle axe here.

Thanks for the tips so far, I'll definitely look into more ways to increase my current tower's performance.

athanc,
Not sure I'd give up on your system but so much depends in what you need it to do. Crunching 4k Red codex would definitely put it on its knees, but I think it is still a reasonable system for most current video. Not saying that the new iMacs aren't great, many people here have switched to them and really love them. At the same time, many are still using older MacPros while waiting for new models to come out. (Tim Cook says this year)(Haswell??). If you do decide to go the iMac route, remember to add in the cost for external drives and be aware that the GPU is not replaceable, and what little you can replace is very difficult! How many iMacs from 2008 vs. MP's are still keeping up to modern apps?

It is hard to make recommendations without knowing all the facts. So far, all I know is that you have a MP3.1(?) 8 core, with 8GB ram, 10.8.3 a GT120 GPU, and using FCPX. Without physically gaining access to the machine and looking over your shoulder, can't tell if upgrade or new is best way to go. Your GT120 is IMHO pretty low on punch, especially if using more than 1 monitor. Also a better card will really improve Motion, almost all of the Adobe products; PS/AE… (nVidia better here than Radeon; need Cuda support) and definitely DaVinci Resolve. Programs utilize CPU/GPU differently. Even different versions of same program behave different.
I use a MP1.1, XFX6870 GPU (Windows version, Out of box, ~ $100), only 5GB ram and lots of hdds and I can edit HD multi-cam. I also bought a Retina MBP 16Gb that I edit on all the time, actually faster mainly due to ssd.

How is your computer organized? Do you have multiple hard drives? Boot and applications on separate drive from your media files? Do you use a raid set up? What speed and size are your drives? Do they have enough extra free space (@ least 15-25%)?

Also totally left out is what type of video are you editing, SD/HD/4K, codex, single or multi-cam, other programs you run, etc…?? Do you use multiple monitors? What are your workflow habits? Do you make all cuts and then go back to add in titles/transitions/effects or do you like to work on pieces and add all the extras as you go? Do you use lots of compound clips? Do you have background rendering on or off? All of this and many other things can tax the hardware.

Have you ever used programs to diagnose your computer? Activity Monitor in your Utilities Folder is a great place to start. Fire it up while editing and see where your bottlenecks are coming from. AM is dynamic and if you have a second monitor, you can watch what is happening while you work. How much system memory is being used? You want to see Real Memory, not Virtual Memory usage. Pages in and out + swap used will give a good indication if you need more ram. Ram is reasonable $$ investment. Do all the cores max out? Also what programs are using the memory? Is it mostly FCPX?

As Mark mentioned, try using proxies and that will free up resources. Turn off background rendering. Add effects last. How many Projects and Events get opened? Use Event ManagerX by Intelligent Assistance? If you are running several programs, shut them down if possible. Restart the Mac (unsticks any memory and clears some caches). Use Onyx and run permissions and scripts. Shut down spotlight(Privacy). When spotlight starts indexing it really can suck lots of resources and cause paging. Don't stick tons of crap on desktop, especially photos etc…Mac has to read them.

Try firing up Activity Monitor and report back what it shows. There are also lots of other programs that can analyze system i.e. BlackMagic Speed Test can help with disk transfer speeds. Terminal can also tell you a lot if you are comfortable with command line. Apple Developer Tools has an Open GL Monitor to tell you VRAM usage (I suspect your GT120 GPU may run out of VRAM).

More info would be helpful to give an opinion, but in the end, it is your $/call.
Hope this helps, Greg

I have an Early 2008 Mac Pro, 3.2 Quad, OS X 8.3, bumped up to 16 GM RAM, Radeon HD 5870 GPU, and it out performs my new rMBP with REDCODE RAW native editing by quite a bit, when doing heavy compositing.

Since I new replacement aimed at the high end pro market is coming from Apple later in the Fall of this year, not sure if I want to invest in the new GeForce GTX 680 Mac Edition to squeeze more life out if the old girl, or simply wait?

I'm running 2TB OS drive and a 4TB media drive, great performance.

I also run Disk Utility and Disk Warrior once a month religiously, always have, issues are rare.