Mac Pro 2012 Processors

I wanted to know about processor speeds. Is there a notable difference in performance when rendering high quality special effects with a Mac Pro with Two 2.4GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon processors vs. a Mac Pro with Two 2.66GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon processors? Also what difference would I be getting if I went with Westmere processors over the regular Intel Xeon processors? Thanks in advance for the help!

Find the computers you're interested in…in this list:

Mac Benchmarks - Geekbench Browser

…and compare the scores. This will pretty much tell you what you want to know.

- Nick

That helps a little but I'm going to be flat out honest with you guys. I know close to nothing about this stuff so maybe I should be more specific to what I'm going to be using the computer for. I'm going to be utilizing the Adobe CS6 Master Collection, and Red Giant's (Red Giant - Visual Effects Plugins for Digital Video) full line of software and plug-in's. I will be upgrading my RAM to about 32GB (from the standard 12GB). I will more than likely be running these programs in tandem with one another and probably 3 at once. So basically what it comes down to is notable difference between the two processor speeds. Will something render 3 seconds faster because I have a 2.66 over the 2.4 or would the difference be more noticeable than that? Thanks again in advance.

leediggles said:

That helps a little but I'm going to be flat out honest with you guys. I know close to nothing about this stuff so maybe I should be more specific to what I'm going to be using the computer for.

Click to expand...

Bigger numbers are better…that's pretty much what those benchmarks are telling you. So if one number is 10% better than another number…it may not exactly translate to a computing task being performed exactly 10% faster…but probably in that ballpark.

leediggles said:

So basically what it comes down to is notable difference between the two processor speeds. Will something render 3 seconds faster because I have a 2.66 over the 2.4 or would the difference be more noticeable than that? Thanks again in advance.

Click to expand...

Yeah…I hear ya…and totally understand what you would like to know. But it's really hard to say. You can be sure that the 2.66 will be faster than the 2.4 (assuming we are talking the same number of cores…and the exact same generation of Mac Pro's)…or if we're comparing different generations of Mac Pro's…then that's where the list linked above comes in handy.

The video card the Mac Pro's have will have an impact on things as well.

So the overall speed of getting a job done (such as the rendering job you mentioned) is a combination of:

- amount of ram you have
- speed of the storage you have (hard drive or SSD)
- speed of the cores
- number of cores
- how effectively the software you use is written to take advantage of multiple cores
- the video card in the computer

It's really a BIG box of parameters that determine exactly how many seconds an individual computer setup will take to get a project done.

The benchmarks provided in the list will give you a rough estimate of how much faster one computer will be over another. A 10% faster benchmark will be better. A 20% faster benchmark will be better yet. But does that exactly translate to 10-20% faster rendering…maybe not exactly…but maybe close.

But if your current rendering jobs take:

- 2 minutes each…10% faster is 12 seconds
- 10 minutes each…10% faster is 1 minute
- 1 hour each…10% faster is 6 minutes
- 8 hours…10% faster is 48 minutes faster

Of course then this is multiplied by the number of renderings you need to do/day to see how much time you save…or the number of extra renderings you can get done in a day.

- Nick

It depends on the length of the clip being rendered. Render times have a cascading effect. If you're rendering something that only 5 seconds long then yeah, the difference will be seconds to minutes. If you're rendering something that's over an hour long, that little extra speed might save you hours on the render time.

If you're unsure and have the money for it, just get the faster processor if only for the peace of mind.

Pigoo3, thanks so much! That really helps me with my decision. Yes, we are talking the same amount of cores and model of Mac Pro. The way I see it if I go with the 2.4, the money I save over getting a 2.66 can go to a SSD and still be happy with the rendering times. I'm really glad I posted my question here.

Adric said:

It depends on the length of the clip being rendered. Render times have a cascading effect. If you're rendering something that only 5 seconds long then yeah, the difference will be seconds to minutes. If you're rendering something that's over an hour long, that little extra speed might save you hours on the render time.

Click to expand...

Great info "Adric". Just so the OP is clear on what's going on. My "math" was comparing an old rendering time (on a slower computer) to a new rendering time (on a faster/newer computer). To come up with "total time saved" rendering the same project on two different computers (one faster than the other).

I believe what you're saying is…a video clip that is 5 minutes long (viewing time) compared to a video clip that is say 30 minutes long (viewing time)…will have this cascading rendering time effect.

I was also thinking of the rendering of complex still images versus as you mentioned video clips.

I just didn't want the OP to be confused between what each of us was saying.

- Nick

One last thing I think you should definitely check on in making your purchase ... the rendering software. Is it going to take advantage of all the cores and RAM you can throw at it? That too will make a huge difference in your final calculations. I should think most modern software will be multiprocessor and 64-bit savvy, but it never hurts to make sure.

leediggles said:

Pigoo3, thanks so much! That really helps me with my decision. Yes, we are talking the same amount of cores and model of Mac Pro. The way I see it if I go with the 2.4, the money I save over getting a 2.66 can go to a SSD and still be happy with the rendering times. I'm really glad I posted my question here.

Click to expand...

I think that it really depends on how much rendering volume you have…and how long each rendering takes. If you gave us an idea of how much rendering you need to do on a daily basis…and how long each rendering currently takes to complete…that may help me & others give you a "real world" idea on how much time that will "generically" save (meaning an estimate).

If getting the 2.66 Mac Pro will save you hours each day or each week….then it may be worth it…since you could take how much your time is worth/hour...and multiply that by the number of minutes or hours save/week.

Heck…if you save 1 hour/week…and your time is worth $50/hour…then you save $50 dollars/week (or get one extra hour/week of productivity). Multiply this by 52 weeks…and that works out to be $2600 dollars/year!!! This would CLEARLY be worth it to you to get the faster computer.

This is assuming that the rendering you do is "professional rendering" where you get paid for what you do. But even if this is "amateur rendering" (where you're not being paid)…still your time is valuable…but then it may be a better financially to get the less expensive 2.4ghz Mac Pro.

- Nick

I'm with Pigoo, particularly as Apple CEO Tim Cook has already promised that a new Mac Pro model is in the works for 2013, and even if its only half as good as people hope for it will be WAY better than the current model, which has been in need of an update for years.

It might pay off to go cheap for now and bet on the next model. Sorry if I'm not making your choices any easier.

chas_m said:

One last thing I think you should definitely check on in making your purchase ... the rendering software. Is it going to take advantage of all the cores and RAM you can throw at it? That too will make a huge difference in your final calculations. I should think most modern software will be multiprocessor and 64-bit savvy, but it never hurts to make sure.

Click to expand...

Great clarification point! I did mention this in one of my posts above…but this detail could have gotten missed in my longish posts! Like you inferred…it certainly doesn't do anyone any good to have 8-cores…if the software is only using 2 cores! Or if the software doesn't do a good job utilizing the 8-cores it is written for.

@leediggles: I know that you said that you were using Adobe CS6. Information on how well various CS6 applications are written to take advantage of all the cores in a Mac Pro is not very easy to find. One of the only resources I've ever found that discusses this…is this link:

MPG - Mac Performance 101: Cores, Processes, Memory - Application support for multiple CPU cores

This article is a bit outdated (2010)…and it only discusses CS4 and CS5 applications.

- Nick

To the best of my knowledge, Pigoo, CS6 is very 64-bit and multi-core aware, so that should not be an issue.