drop frames and macros

is there a MacPro configuration out there that is virtually guaranteed not to drop frames on a three camera multi clip? Two iMacs I own almost never drop frames, but my MacPro 3.33 Ghz 6 Core with 24GB does all the time. Is it the video card? Currently it's ATI Radeon HD 5770. The MacPro is noticeably faster at all operations, but when doing multi clip, the CPU is over 70 percent idle! Where is the bottleneck?

In all my years I've found most all computers drop frames, it's just something you should turn off and ignore. Only environment I've found it vital to not drop frames is full length feature films. Otherewise, it really doesn't matter.

Is the media on the system drive, or a secondary internal drive?

Here is what I have found out:

With two iMacs playback is perfect with three cameras in a multi cam set up. NO DROPPED FRAMES. Even able to playback over some unrendered sections without incident.
The iMacs are:

-3.4 gHz Intel Core I7 4 Core with 16 GB of memory, an ATI 6970M Graphics card with 2GB of memory and a 8 TB Sonnet Technologies Raid system connected via Thunderbolt. This system is also connected via Thunderbolt to a Matrox converter box and then onto into a MXO2 mini box which feeds a 1080 HD TV monitor. I have found that this combination works, so if you have an MXO2 mini from the past lying around, you should try it. The Matrox converter box is only $199. There are tons of MX02 minis being sold off on Ebay from a fraction of their original cost.

-3.9 GHZ Intel Core I7 4 Core with 12GB of memory and an ATI 5750 Graphics card with 1 GB of memory. No Thunderbolt, just a FW800 port. No external monitor.

I copied off my EVents and Projects Folders containing the muliticam project to a Lacie 4 TB drive (2 2TB drives inside and configured as Raid 0). The Lacie unit only has FW 800. I connected this drive to both iMacs and again, playback was perfect. This inspite of the fact that the Lacie drive has a very poor transfer rate...around 50 mbytes/sec.

Next I copied all this material to a Sofraid configuration on a MacPro, 3.33 GHz 6 core with the ATI 5770 graphics card and 1 TB of onboard memory. Immediately there were dropped frames for the same material. When the Lacie was connected, there were the same dropped frames.

When I set FCP to report only dropped frames from slow disc performance, there were no notifications.

I disagree with you about dropped frames. They are very annoying and if you trying to ascertain what quality playback is really going to be like, you need to have a system capable of doing this.

So my question is still....is there a MacPro configuration out there that at least equal to the iMac performance is this regard? I do not think it is a hard drive issue, nor a CPU issue. I am thinking that even a 12 core MacPro would still barf. I am thinking that Apple has written FCP to perform optimally with the iMac and other machines using Core i7

In all my years of teaching and consulting around the country, very rarely does anyone really care about dropped frames during editing. All I'm saying, my experience. If it's an issue for you, then yes, you need the fastest HDD configuration you can get, which is T'bolt for a stand alone computer.

Now, SofRaid is a software RAID solution, which is not as robust as a hardware RAID solution. So you've got that going against you. I'd try with just the internal SATA drives with no raid, just to compare. Honest, I've seen stand alone internal MP drives outperform software raid on them. Not the norm, but it happens. Or try using OS X's built in software raid. Just for comparison.

Second, nothing will be as fast as T'bolt on a stand alone computer. Drive through put has everything to do with dropped frames. It's all in how fast the app can read/write data from the drive, nothing else. CPU/GPU/RAM won't effect actual playback. It's all data pipe speed there.

I edited for two weeks on a new 17" MBP maxed out with a LaCie T'bolt drive and 27" Apple T'bolt monitor, and it blew the doors off my maxed out 2008 3.2GHz MP on internal SATA drives. So go figure.

I think you are missing my point.....how come a lousy Lacie drive connected by FW800 plays back perfectly with the iMacs WITHOUT DROPPED FRAMES, but not when connected to the MacPro?

I didn't mention it previously but the same thing happens when I connect an OWC Mercury Elite Al Pro Q2 configured as raid 0 with four 1TB drives and connected via Esata. The speed of this drive is about 260 Mb/sec.

That is odd for an eSATA hardware RAID.

I really suspect the video card .....I intend to swap out that ATI 5770 for the ATI 5870.

Can't find too much on this site about the best video cards for FCP X or indeed on other sites

Highly doubt it's the video card for simple playback. I'm running an ATI Radeon HD 4870 and have no drop frame issues. In fact, I just tested on a 4 angle Multiclip, off a plain old internal SATA drive, no dropped frames.