The future is definitely bright..

Just been in to see the new Mac Pro working it's magic with fcpx 10.1.1 (using a g-raid thunderbolt to access media)..

I was stunned at the performance AND how small the new Mac Pro is!

Currently I'm using a full spec iMac 2013, but I'm already planning my new purchase for when I eventually move up to using 4k (that reminds me I need a 4k camera, 4k screen and thunderbolt storage!!)

As a semi pro in this field I can see why the pros are excited (and bank managers nervous).

BTW interesting workflow from the Apple genius was he bought a thunderbolt dock and buys individual HDD for each client base (then pops them in a draw).. Bit better than my 9 external hard drives I have collated

Hi Phil,

Happy to hear you like the performance of the new MP. The future is indeed very bright

- Ronny

We're excitedly awaiting the delivery of our new Mac Pro to work with our RED Epic-X and FCP X 10.1.1.

We went for the 6 core with 32GB RAM, twin D700 GPUs and the promise R4 8TB raid storage.

Hope we've chosen well. :blink:

The one I saw on demo was a similar model but only had 16gb ram (think 256 flash but not sure)..

The apple rep opened up 17 applications in one go and it was rapid.

Even took off the top cover and everything was so accessibly!

However, the external drive was a thunderbolt 1 not 2, but the possibilities are fantastic.

Hi Damian,

The setup you have picked will be just perfect. I will continue to use our R6 Thunderbolt1 Promise RAIDs for quite awhile. We haven't been able to saturate the TB1 busses using 6 striped drives so far, so I don't see any real benefice in replacing the RAIDs with TB2 enclosures at this time.

- Ronny

I can only dream of your workflow/setups guys.

what would max out a new 6 core mac pro Ronnie? (I am assuming 8k is not being used yet)

Honestly, I haven't got the faintest idea what will choke a 6 core. Wether you go for the 6 or the 8 core model (or higher) has more to do with the kind of work you do and the applications you are running.

Whatever your setup it's important to not have any bottlenecks. Fast and reliable drives are at least as important as fast cores and GPUs. But from the many tests I have read I think that for FCPX you definitely benefit from going with the dual 700s for any serious editing work.

- Ronny

Well I sometimes get a little overloaded with complex AE compositions but I can't see them causing this little beast any problems.. (only have iMac 27 i7, 680mx, 2gb video, 1tb fusion but it handles my projects just fine)

I guess only time will tell, but certainly from what I saw today it was 'silky' smooth in operation (and quiet too!)

We do a fair bit of 3D (Maya/C4D) and motion graphics (AE/Motion) work so having a machine that will not crawl along once you start to get serious with content is vital to our workflow.

Also being able to deal with 5K RED Epic footage is important as quite a few of our clients want stills pulling from the shoot.

C4D and Maya can only use one GPU for now, the classic C4D renderer is not even GPU capable, and AE is not fully optimized for the new Mac Pro either. So you won't see much benefit in these areas for the time being.

For such applications CPU power is still predominant. But everyone seems to really like the potential of the new Mac Pro, so they are working hard to make their software better optimized for this machine. I think a lot will change in due time. Motion of course already fully benefits from the dual FirePros. It runs screaming fast on the new MP.

- Ronny

gaddster wrote: BTW interesting workflow from the Apple genius was he bought a thunderbolt dock and buys individual HDD for each client base (then pops them in a draw).. Bit better than my 9 external hard drives I have collated

Can you be more specific about the thunderbolt dock? I'd love to find a thunderbolt HDD dock like I have for USB 3....

The apple guy did show me on an internet site but I can't remember what it was called, it was something along the lines of this:-

www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/985459-RE..._10gb_s_storage.html

And he also showed me a USB 3 storage

I asked if he had encountered any problems storing the drives for months on end then docking them again and he said no.

Thanks!

Soooo frustrating they only ever put one TB port on these things for $200 when they're charging such a premium over the USB3 versions.

FYI we have lots of drives we mount via docks just like this - but USB3. They work fine. One USB3 dual dock with 2 HDDs configured as RAID 0 gives me about 260MB/s. Not as fast as SSD, but faster than a single drive via either TB or USB3.

G-tech make a VERY good dock solution. The G-Dock ev.

www.g-technology.eu/products/g-dock-ev.php

The dock is TB but the drives are actually USB3 so they're hot swappable and can be used as standalone mobile bus powered USB3 drives.

They have an offer on at the moment with 2 x 1 TB drives for free when you buy the 2TB G-Dock ev. so, that's 4TB for the price of 2TB.

He did say something about a G:Dock (I'm assuming you may be using one) but my eyes and brain was too busy looking at the inners of the Mac Pro and wondering if I could justify one