2008 Mac Pro or New MBP 17"

[John Desay]

Hi Guys,
Am thinking of selling my 2008 iMac and 2008 MBP to purchasing a faster system for handling my Scarlet X footage(when it arrives!!) Anyone got an opinion to which machine would be faster to handle 4K R3D files with the intentions of bringing a mobile set up on location for wrangling and edit/grade? While the 2008 Mac Pro i was looking at has 8 cores(2 X Quad Core Intel Xeon 2.8ghz w/6Gb RAM),would it be faster than a new Macbook Pro 17"(2.4GHz quad-core Intel Core i7).The Mac Pro obviously has more cores but the MBP comes with Thunderbolt options.Most people on these threads seem to favour the tower as it has expansion capabilities with video cards(namely the RED Rocket) and RAM upgrades etc while the MBP is a confined unit but i dont think anyone can deny the speed that Thunderbolt offers...i'm only assuming that the RedStation will eventually be able to offload Redmags using Thunderbolt making a huge time saver on set or am i wrong???

Your views would be greatly appreciated as the best way to conserve a few bucks these days is to RESEARCH RESEARCH RESEARCH(all on RedUser of course)!!!

Cheers,

John.

[Ron Lagerlof]

Hi John,
Here's my post from today's thread re: Mac or PC...
Hope it helps.


I just bought a new MB Pro, 17", 8GB ram, 256GB SSD and am installing a 512GB SSD in place of the optical drive. Thunderbolt interface to Black Magic Ultra Studio 3D interface running both Premier Pro and AVID. Entire system, way faster then my Mac Pro, under $5K (plus software) Here's the deal... if you own FCP, do a crossgrade to AVID for $1499 (you just missed the $995 deal with a free upgrade to Media Composer 6 - which I just got) If you own other Adobe products, for example, I owned Photoshop 5, you can get the entire suite upgrade for about $1000 that includes Premier Pro and After Effects.
Best thing is, if you need to run Windows, do it on boot camp. So much better than any of my old PCs. In fact I just converted my last two over to Mac Minis to run my accounting software and AutoCAD workstations. And, my Apple stock almost hit $400 again today... Got AAPL?

[Cüneyt Kaya]

Hi John,
Here's my post from today's thread re: Mac or PC...
Hope it helps.

i did 999 crossgrade too. how to get the free upgrade. cant find something on the avid page.
thanks

[Brian Merlen]

neither wait until you get the camera and buy a new mac pro assuming the new model is out by then... if its still not out i would consider the newest mac pro before i consider a mbp, unless you know you need to be mobile. if you need to be mobile you have answered your own question.

i got a desktop and turn down lots of gigs cuz i dont wanna haul it around the tri state. food for thought...

[Ryland Jones]

I just bought a new macmini with a quad-core i7. 8 GB of ram, and upgrading with OWC to 16GB for an extra $350. Totaling around $1,700. So now, I have that mounted to the back of my nice monitor, Sonnet thunderbolt ExpressCard adapter ( which JUST arrived today!) for eSATA and my Qio card reader. Next month that will be daisy chained to a thunderbolt PCIe adapter box ( aprox. $900 ) with my red rocket in it. So now I have a fast computer, plenty of ram, and only taking up the space of a monitor and an external drive, all for about the base price of a Mac Pro.

Just an idea. Also it makes my Red Rocket mobile and very easy to rent to people as well. All fits in one pelican case and travels well. :-)

[Tim Whitcomb]

I just bought a new macmini with a quad-core i7. 8 GB of ram, and upgrading with OWC to 16GB for an extra $350. Totaling around $1,700. So now, I have that mounted to the back of my nice monitor, Sonnet thunderbolt ExpressCard adapter ( which JUST arrived today!) for eSATA and my Qio card reader. Next month that will be daisy chained to a thunderbolt PCIe adapter box ( aprox. $900 ) with my red rocket in it. So now I have a fast computer, plenty of ram, and only taking up the space of a monitor and an external drive, all for about the base price of a Mac Pro.

Just an idea. Also it makes my Red Rocket mobile and very easy to rent to people as well. All fits in one pelican case and travels well. :-)

Are there not performance hits with the Red Rocket with a PCI adapter? pretty sure Jeff kilgore just addressed this issue in a thread last week. Rocket thrives in a 16X slot.

[Ryland Jones]

True, it does do better, but even if a day of feature shooting two EPICS takes three hours to render, I'm still a happy camper! :-)

If you were in a 5k/ full res demanding playback situation, maybe not the most ideal setup. But for traveling around and portability, its will be great for me. Just depends on your demands I guess.

Just like most people around here, I will definitely post my render and playback tests when I get the PCI adapter box. When I spoke to Sonnet about there rack mount unit, they told me it was going to be a dual slot, one full length slot, and one half length. Which is different than whats on their website description. I asked to double check and the guys told me he directly asked his engineer. So, we'll see. Only time will tell. Sometime after the new year I suppose.

It's funny how long ago I joined this site and how little I have posted. Long time listener, first time caller.