[Solved] Stop-gap FCPX rig

[tedcox]

Hey there,

I work for an NGO and fund-raising is down this year. My Customac Pro 2010 is getting long in the tooth and my old Mac Pro 1,1 lags unbearably on 4K footage. (I think a couple of RX460s in place of the two 5770s would probably solve this, but since Piker Alpha hasn't been able to make Sierra work, that's not a possibility atm). I had some personal funds set aside for a new Macbook Pro this year, but then my daughter got married...

So, I can probably scrape up 500-600 dollars and I need something to keep me going for the next year or two while I save up for new hardware again.

I could buy a Mac Pro 3,1 on ebay or build a middling hack. Or maybe there's some way to leverage my existing machines I'm not thinking of. Anyone who spends a lot of time in FCPX have any thoughts?

Thanks!
Ted

 

[Going Bald]

A pair of R280X would do better than the 460's - they are not fully supported yet and have problems.
See https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/radeon-compatibility-guide-ati-amd-graphics-cards.171291/

One possible upgrade is to get a 6-core Xeon W3680 for about USD $150 or less on ebay to replace the i7.

 

[tedcox]

Thanks for the reply.

The 280Xs are tough to put in the Mac Pro since it only has two 6-pin power leads. And, IIRC, my two 5770s are fairly equivalent to one 280X in FCPX terms.

The Xeon upgrade is interesting, though. Any read on how much of a performance difference two more cores would make in FCPX?

 

[Going Bald]

Not sure about FCPX, but it gives a 10-15% increase in Geekbench

 

[rwillett]

Apparently you can put a pair of 280X cards in a Mac Pro, but it needs a separate PSU and a bit of hardware hacking. I looked at this some years ago and there are some extremely vitriolic threads about doing this. Some people think its madness, some people think its fine. The current draw on the 280X cards is waaaaay more than the older Mac Pro's can deliver, hence the extra PSU. There was also discussion on whether the tracks of the PCB would lift due to the amount of current. I am not an electrical engineer so can't comment.

I decided not to go down this route and built a hackintosh instead.

A pair of 5770's is around 1 R280X card indeed. I don't know if the 5770's can handle 4K footage, as I have never tried and no longer have a working 5770 system to try it on.

You'd get some benefit from extra cores in FCPX but moving from 4 to 6 won't make that big a difference IIRC. Your biggest difference will come from dual GPU's and the problem on the Mac Pro is running them. Its not clear in detail what hardware your Customac 2010 has, perhaps add a bit more detail.

I think you can add a 3rd 5770 to your Mac Pro (if it fits in), that might be an option

Rob

 

[tedcox]

Yeah. I'd looked at the power supply hack. That steps outside of my comfort zone for sure.

The Mac Pro is tapped out on slots. I have an eSata card in it, which connects to an array of drives for editing. It was brilliant for editing 1080p, but with 4K footage, the interface constantly lags. Drop a clip, wait 30 seconds to a minute. Move the mouse, wait 30 seconds to a minute. Not sure if that's a CPU or GPU problem.

The Customac is just running a single overclocked 5870. I don't typically use it for FCPX. It doesn't have the interface lag I'm seeing on the Mac Pro, but the background renders are really slow. There is plenty of power supply there, though, so I could probably add a couple of 280Xs without additional costs.

Interesting. I'll look into that. Out of curiousity, is anyone editing 4K FCPX on a X58 board? What are your specs?

 

[Going Bald]

Apparently you can put a pair of 280X cards in a Mac Pro, but it needs a separate PSU and a bit of hardware hacking. I looked at this some years ago and there are some extremely vitriolic threads about doing this. Some people think its madness, some people think its fine. The current draw on the 280X cards is waaaaay more than the older Mac Pro's can deliver, hence the extra PSU. There was also discussion on whether the tracks of the PCB would lift due to the amount of current. I am not an electrical engineer so can't comment.

I decided not to go down this route and built a hackintosh instead.

A pair of 5770's is around 1 R280X card indeed. I don't know if the 5770's can handle 4K footage, as I have never tried and no longer have a working 5770 system to try it on.

You'd get some benefit from extra cores in FCPX but moving from 4 to 6 won't make that big a difference IIRC. Your biggest difference will come from dual GPU's and the problem on the Mac Pro is running them. Its not clear in detail what hardware your Customac 2010 has, perhaps add a bit more detail.

I think you can add a 3rd 5770 to your Mac Pro (if it fits in), that might be an option

Rob

Good catch there - I was assuming OP was planning on upgrading the Customac build, not the MacPro. Then the PSU problem does not exist.

 

[rwillett]

Yeah. I'd looked at the power supply hack. That steps outside of my comfort zone for sure.

The Mac Pro is tapped out on slots. I have an eSata card in it, which connects to an array of drives for editing. It was brilliant for editing 1080p, but with 4K footage, the interface constantly lags. Drop a clip, wait 30 seconds to a minute. Move the mouse, wait 30 seconds to a minute. Not sure if that's a CPU or GPU problem.

The Customac is just running a single overclocked 5870. I don't typically use it for FCPX. It doesn't have the interface lag I'm seeing on the Mac Pro, but the background renders are really slow. There is plenty of power supply there, though, so I could probably add a couple of 280Xs without additional costs.

Interesting. I'll look into that. Out of curiousity, is anyone editing 4K FCPX on a X58 board? What are your specs?

The Mac Pro only runs 3GB on Sata, you're probably hitting all sorts of limits with FCPX on it. I had one and loved the build quality but at the end of the day, my Hack is 10x better, easier, faster and quieter.

I have a Z97X motherboard, 32GB RAM and an i4790 at 4Ghz with dual 280X cards. My primary work is mobile apps and very large databases (> 60GB) for mobile traffic data. FCPX is a sideline.

Rob

 

[tedcox]

The Mac Pro only runs 3GB on Sata, you're probably hitting all sorts of limits with FCPX on it.

No argument. It's also running all the PCIE cards at half speed. Not great all the way around, and I lose two hard drive bays having a second graphics card running at 8x.

I appreciate both your thoughts. It's been really helpful. I've got a couple of ideas to try out with the two different machines now. I'll post back with whatever solution I land on and how it works.

FYI, Going Bald, I also found your note in another thread about the NEC USB3 chipset on my X58 board not being supported anymore. THANK YOU! I've been beating my head against the wall trying to figure that out for nearly a year.

 

[tedcox]

Just wanted to post a final follow up for anyone who winds up reading this downstream.

I am once again editing happily on my 2006 Mac Pro tower. The key take aways are as follows:

1. I switched to a proxy editing workflow (just check the proxy box when importing footage) This tells final cut to use a more efficient codec, and gives it permission to downscale your footage. So in essence, I'm editing in 1080p once again, but can output to 4K without resolution loss (because the system will use the 4K masters for the final renders)

2. I updated the machine to El Capitan and FCPX 10.3. There are some nice efficiencies here for FCPX users.

3. I installed an SSD for the operating system. (Just a cheapie Crucial from Amazon)

4. Drive speed tests showed that my esata drive array was only operating at 90MB/s. (I'm able to achieve that on a single internal drive). I believe this is due to a combination of factors:

- The Mac Pro 1,1 and 2,1 were PCIE 1.0. So all the slots run at half the speed of later PCIE ports.
- With 2x 5770's installed one on top and one bottom so I can run X16 and X8, the two remaining open slots run at 1X (half the bandwidth of 1X for PCIE 2.0 and above). Thus my ESATA controller is bandwidth limited.
- The controller is a 4X card, running at 1X.
- My top 5770 blocks two drive bays.
- SOLUTION: I split my RAID array, installing my new SSD and one RAID disk into the optical bay, two additional RAID disks into the two open slots in the Mac Pro, and the fourth remained in the ESATA enclosure. The array now runs at ~350MB/s. Nothing spectacular, but definitely fast enough to make the 1080P proxies feel snappy.​

5. Finally, for convenience, I installed a natively supported USB3 card into my remaining 1X slot. A fast SSD only achieves 150MB/s on the USB3 link, but that's still more than double the speed of USB2, so every little bit helps.

Total Cost ~$136 and I'm editing again. (Free if all you do is step 1 & 2, which likely was the main thing.)