When Apple released the new iMacs based on the i7 chip in 2012, I decided the time was right to move from my 2009 MacPro tower with Apple xServe Raid storage. I was ready to embrace FCPX and Thunderbolt back then and have been modestly happy with the performance.
Since that time, Apple has announced and started shipping, albeit in limited quantities, the new MacPro tower. I am not actual sure the term “tower” is correct, as the new MacPro is quite small and round compared to the former.
After months of teasing the specs and speculation on the pricing, Apple finally announced the pricing and BTO options on December 19th 2013.
After mulling over the options, I decided that I did not want to spend almost $10K on the system. I feel like the money spent on the GPU’s will be the best bang for the buck with FCPX 10.1. With that in mind, I spec’d the following system:
3.5GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon E5
32GB 1866MHz DDR3 ECC – 4X8GB
512GB PCIe-based Flash Storage
Dual AMD FirePro D700-6GB VRAM
I ordered this on December 19th, and the lead time says “February”. I know that some people who ordered lower specced systems were able to get them right away. I will wait the extra month or so to get the higher performance machine. I feel that my money will be well spent on the upgraded GPUs. It appears that the D700’s will have a later availability than the D300 and D500 options.
FCPX 10.1 which Apple released in conjunction with the MacPro announcement, has been “tuned” to take advantage of the dual GPUs in the new MacPro.
As I right this blog, I just read on BareFeats that the 6Core D500 test machine they have outperformed the 12Core D700 machine. Maybe that is the sweet spot, 6Core D500.
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