4-Core Ivy Bridge VS my 12-core MacPro

[Daniel Cegla]

How does a 4-core Ivy Bridge compare to 2x 6-core Xeon Westmeres performance wise, in apps such as FCPX & Adobe CS6?

[Subhadip Sen]

It depends. CS6 is a heavily multi-threaded app so it is definitely utilizing all 12 cores / 24 threads when it needs to. The easiest way to check this is by using Activity Monitor on OS X or Task Manager on Windows and monitor the CPU usage.

Simply put, for usage scenarios which are bottlenecked by the CPU, the 12 core Xeon setup will be faster. For those bound by the GPU, the 4-core Ivy Bridge w/ GTX 670 will be faster. If you are planning to do a lot of real-time work with native R3D files, I would recommend hanging on to the 12-core system (or replacing it with a 6-core Sandy Bridge-E system). Do note that the Windows version of CS6 will give you 5%-10% extra performance, so consider running Bootcamp for an free performance boost. On the other hand, if you work off lightly compressed / uncompressed codecs, the Ivy Bridge system will be faster in many ways.

An Ivy Bridge + GTX 680 rig is pretty much ideal for gaming, but let that not get in the way of what gets your work done. Really, even a Radeon HD 7850 and Core i5 IVB is fast enough for the most demanding games at 1920 resolution, so you can just build a separate gaming system if need be for around the $1000 mark.

[Daniel Cegla]

here is my core/thread usage when working in FCP X with footage, in the core3 shot you see my rendering + transcoding, in the other shots just working with/rendering shots with heavy intensive effects and multi layers on the h.264 footage:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7977126...cb883b112ce52f

[Nick Timmons]

Sandy Bridge-E is a good option if you want 6 cores.

[Brian Merlen]

Apple sells that same model refurb for 4,250 with Applecare. So I am not sure you can realistically sell it at that price (without other goodies included)

PCs wont run FCPX or 7 without hacking them.... So I would suggest keeping the Mac and downloading the CS6 free 1 month trial to see how much you like it. Switching to a PC is not mandatory, you can use all 3 Apps if you stay on Mac without needing to hack the PC, which can be a pain...

[Jeffrey T. Morgan]

Apple sells that same model refurb for 4,250 with Applecare. So I am not sure you can realistically sell it at that price (without other goodies included)

PCs wont run FCPX or 7 without hacking them.... So I would suggest keeping the Mac and downloading the CS6 free 1 month trial to see how much you like it. Switching to a PC is not mandatory, you can use all 3 Apps if you stay on Mac without needing to hack the PC, which can be a pain...

The only caveat to this is that to fully realize Adobes workflow, you want to use NVidia graphics cards to enable the Mercury Playback Engine, which personally sped up my render times over 400% and made real time playback possible with a lot of basic filters... which isn't a current mac option outside of a quadro card???

[Brian Merlen]

Yes there are cuda options for the Mac Pro, and personally I think it makes more sense to stick with the 12 core, try the free trial of CS6, and take it from there. Its essentially a riskless 1 month breathing period... Figure out if its really worth investing in. Also I would buy it for Mac and that would limit your issues, I am not sure why you see it necessary to switch OS to run a program that works on OSX. Avid also runs on OSX perhaps you should consider that as well. I personally own and use all three currently.