I'm considering upgrading the 12GB of 1066Hz DDR3 RAM in my 2009 Mac Pro (2.66GHz 8-Core Nehalem) to 32GB.

I'm (now) mainly using Adobe Production Premium CS5.5.2 (and, currently, mainly Prem Pro, some After Effects work and some Photoshop work within that suite) with some legacy projects in Apple FCS2. Raw media is on an internal RAID 0 (2x 7,200rpm drives each of 1 TB), separate to the 1TB drive with the OS/software on it, another with other stuff etc. I have lots of external drives attached via Firewire 800 for back-ups etc. and I'm shooting/editing XDCAM EX3, Canon 7D and Panasonic TM900 (1080p50 AVCHD2) stuff.

Over here it'll cost me around £300, give or take, to do this 32GB RAM upgrade - but I'm thinking it'll be well worth it. Mind you, on a number of renders the processor is maxed out (when I look on my Activity Monitor) so I'm thinking this RAM upgrade won't affect that, more the speed with which I can see applied effects when editing in the Adobe suite. Also, I rarely see my current RAM usage getting much above 6-7GB in Activity Monitor unless I have lots and lots open. Wonder why? I know FCS2 is 32 bit and won't benefit from all this RAM etc. - but I'm rarely using that now.

Upgrading my graphics card (currently ATI 4870) might also be worth a long hard look too - but that'll be a lot more expensive I think as there are very limited options for this Mac Pro. It's currenly driving two 24 inch 1920x1200 pixel Dell monitors.

In a month or so I'll also upgrade to CS6 (as I believe that may, and I stress may, speed up renders too?), but I want to wait until I've some ongoing projects out of the way first and to see how the bug reports go.

I'd greatly appreciate any comments anyone has as to if this RAM upgrade from 12 to 32GB is worthwhile. Also, if I do it, anyone in the UK got a use for/want to make me an offer for the 12GB RAM (it is 6 x 2GB sticks) that I'll be taking out!

I just upgraded my 2009 with a PNY quadro 4000. I kept my 16gB ram and the computer is at least 5 times faster rendering AE projects (cs5.5 and now cs6). Ram will be my next upgrade.
Get the card...it's like a new computer!

Thanks for the input. Sounds brilliant! Mine's a Mac Pro 4.1 so this must be the graphics card, right? Currently, about £780 including our VAT.

PNY NVIDIA Quadro 4000 2GB Graphics Card for Mac - Jigsaw24 (http://www.jigsaw24.com/product-details/m005ava/pny-nvidia-quadro-4000-2gb-graphics-card-for-mac)

and

http://store.apple.com/uk/product/H3314ZM/A/nvidia-quadro-4000-for-mac

Looks like I need to do the card before I even think about touching the RAM then, ideally upgrade that too when funds allow but definitely the card is the priority right now, judging from your experience. Glad I asked - Thank you!

OK. Been doing a lot of reading around. I'm currently running 10.5.8 (Leopard) and everything is hunky-dory, fast and stable...but not as fast as it could be (if I get that new graphics card). Seems that I need to upgrade to at least 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) for the PNY NVIDIA Quadro 4000 card to work. Seems going to 10.7.3 (Lion) is recommended by the card manufacturer - but I read of a ton of problems with older software, especially with Apple FCS 2 which needs Rosetta to work (and that's not supported by Lion, or so I read).

I absolutely need FCS 2 on my system as I have clients requesting (and paying for!) new upgrades to archived projects pretty regularly, i.e. ones that I produced for them over the last few years in FCP 6.0.6 etc.

Not sure yet from what I've read that it's worth the risk of upgrading to Snow Leopard or not? If I can get there and have trouble free FCS 2 functionality that would at least allow me to run the new 4000 card (with the driver supplied on the CD it comes with) AND have much improved performance when running CS 5.5.2 Production Premium. Obviously, since I switched to CS 5.5.2 all new projects are done on it now, maybe soon CS 6 (once they sort the silly bugs out).

I need to think some more as I'm rapidly getting out of my comfort zone trying to work out the best solution for this! I really don't want to screw up my nice stable functioning system....Help!!!!

And I thought Mac's were supposed to be trouble free. I have two of them in my loft, they are just number crunchers, just like my Windows PC (s).

Hope you manage to solve the problem Andy, CS6 and EX3 files just fly, a good graphics card will take care of the image processing leaving your CPU to crunch away at the system and application data.

OK. Been doing a lot of reading around. I'm currently running 10.5.8 (Leopard) and everything is hunky-dory, fast and stable...but not as fast as it could be (if I get that new graphics card). Seems that I need to upgrade to at least 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) for the PNY NVIDIA Quadro 4000 card to work. Seems going to 10.7.3 (Lion) is recommended by the card manufacturer - but I read of a ton of problems with older software, especially with Apple FCS 2 which needs Rosetta to work (and that's not supported by Lion, or so I read).

I absolutely need FCS 2 on my system as I have clients requesting (and paying for!) new upgrades to archived projects pretty regularly, i.e. ones that I produced for them over the last few years in FCP 6.0.6 etc.

Not sure yet from what I've read that it's worth the risk of upgrading to Snow Leopard or not? If I can get there and have trouble free FCS 2 functionality that would at least allow me to run the new 4000 card (with the driver supplied on the CD it comes with) AND have much improved performance when running CS 5.5.2 Production Premium. Obviously, since I switched to CS 5.5.2 all new projects are done on it now, maybe soon CS 6 (once they sort the silly bugs out).

I need to think some more as I'm rapidly getting out of my comfort zone trying to work out the best solution for this! I really don't want to screw up my nice stable functioning system....Help!!!!

I had a bear of a time going from Leopard to Snow Leopard and ended up doing a clean install of all my software which took almost 2 full days to get plugins and such reloaded.

I have not upgraded to Lion on my 4,1 MacPro and the PNY Quadro 4000 works perfectly. Can't speak for running it on Leopard.

My MacPro system is pretty much locked as I have FCS3 which clients request tweaks to projects years later. Just revised a video from 2 years ago! I have a new laptop running Lion and FCPX (which sucks.) I have since upgraded to CS6 Production Premium on both machines which is where I really see the difference with my card upgrade and the new laptops DUAL video cards! FCS will not benefit from the RAM or video card upgrade.

Thanks guys. Just got yet another client that needs a bunch of archived FCP projects refreshing (needs update technical specs etc. in the videos) so I'll have to put all this whole graphics card updating thing on hold for a little while longer.

Andy, if you need Rosetta functionality (FS2 etc), then don't upgrade the OS. If you absolutely can't afford to upgrade and buy a second Mac Pro then you might consider getting the video card, and setting up an external drive hopefully eSata, and loading the new OS setup on that. You can then choose to boot off that when you need to, and start the migration slowly, at your own pace. You can choose your boot drives inside the disk utility. When you are finally migrated, you can swap the drives and reverse the process, only using your old drive to boot off of when you need your rosetta apps. Upgrade the RAM now though. It's always going to be useful.

The wildcard here is your new video card, I'm unsure of how it may work without having the latest OS to match it's latest drivers. If they can guarantee that you can run it on the version of the OS that you have, then install it, and install the newest drivers on the second (external) boot drive.

I routinely back up my OS drive using a portable drive dock from OWC, cost is about $35. It comes with multiple ports, so I usually use it with FW800. I then run diskutility and create an image to it. Works fine. You likely could set it up to boot off that for low cost. I assume you have an eSata card in your MacPro?

I have my Mac Pro in a state of non upgrade to new versions of the OS. FCP 7 works fine on it, and I'm not moving forward with this, since Apple can't guarantee us that there will be future versions of the MacPro product line.

But the current model will serve me fine for some time to come.

By the way, Adobe allows you to run multiple versions of licensed software on the same box. I have CS 5.5 and 6.0 running side by side. It's one of the nice things about working with a company that treats it's customers as professionals.

Good luck.

Great suggestions. Thanks Al. I also have this mid 2008 MBP so that may allow me some options too. You've got me thinking some more!

OK, Courier just arrived. Phase 1 complete. I should know in a few days what this brings :-)

For those that have been wondering about all this extra RAM, sure it seems to help things zip along a bit - but I would not call it dramatic. Mind you, since upgrading from 12GB to 32GB earlier this week I've not done anything too taxing, just a few simple After Effects things on 1080p50 AVCHD2 28Mbps footage via Dynamic Link to relatively straighforward Prem Pro projects in CS 5.5.2 Production Premium.

I've been playing around with RAM allocation and currently have 16GB allocated to Prem Pro and the rest to anything else (i.e. primarily for After Effects most of the time). I've been studying the Mac Pros Activity Monitor. Rendering etc. will use all of that allocated 16GB often (maybe I need to go higher). However, in rendering out H.264 files I would not call it that much faster. I think these are more processor speed limited anyway. Maybe for other video formats it'll be different (.mpg files for example?)

I do notice that disc write speeds can now max out sometimes (I use 2 internal 7,200rpm WD hard discs in a RAID 0 for media used in active projects, the OS living on another internal WD 7,200rpm boot drive). I also have a forth internal WD 7,200rpm for other stuff. As before, processor usage can max out in certain tasks. I'm pretty confident that RAM is not now a limitation on my 8 core 2.66Ghz 2009 Mac Pro 4.1 - but at 32GB I would have hoped that would be the case!!! Ah well, spending just over £300 has at least done something then....

So now I'm really wondering if I need to bite the bullet and upgrade the graphics card from the fairly basic ATI 4870 that I've had since 2009 to a PNY NVIDIA Quadro 4000. That's going to cost me about £750-800 area with tax (and require me to make the gradual transition to Snow Leopard from 10.5.8 Leopard using some of the excellent tips posted earlier - for driver compatibility reasons).

http://www.jigsaw24.com/product-details/m005ava/pny-nvidia-quadro-4000-2gb-graphics-card-for-mac

I'm feeling a bit out of my depth so any more insights about all this would be very much appreciated. Thanks!

Andy,

Money spent on CS6 and a nvidia card will be well spent. I have 16gb of RAM on my system and there is no time lag or waiting for things to render, even when I am editing multicam projects (3 full HD 1080p files)

CS6 has an amazing Warp stabilizer which I applied to some shots filmed from a light aircraft, they are rock solid now.

Here is a short clip of the Warp Stabilizer in action, the same footage has been used in both clips

http://youtu.be/V1aQ-_m-dSo

Just a quick update on this. Started a new project tonight (more TM900 1080p50 AVCHD2 28Mbps files). I put all the 35 minutes of clips on the timeline (automate to sequence etc.) and got a yellow line (as normal, i.e. they play well but not perfectly). So I decided the render the timeline to turn it all to green. I am amazed at how much faster this is happening than before. Rough guess 2-3 times faster. :-)

OK just another update on this. I have a few days spare between big projects that I've finished and a few that will start later this month.

I've decided to embark on the route that will hopefully allow me to, eventually, run a PNY NVIDIA Quadro 4000 card on this 2009 Mac Pro to get the advantage of that with my now much loved Adobe CS5.5 Production Premium, whilst retaining FCP 6.0.6 capability for some of my clients needs. The first stage of this requires me to run Snow Leopard (as 10.6.3 is the minimum OSX needed to run that graphics card's drivers).

1. I've now an up to date and fully tested disk image of my nice stable, fully functioning system with Leopard 10.5.8 which I can easily boot from (on an external FW800 Icy Box HDD dock). I also have a Time Machine back-up HDD which can also slot into this dock - but I don't really trust Time Machine for the "Pro Applications" - from what I've read on here in the past by people like Robert Lane.

2. I've backed up everything from the four x 1TB internal drives on numerous external (FW800) drives, often in duplicate or triplicate!!! Bay 1 is OSX and apps. Bay 2 is Render Files and Pictures/other stuff, bays 3 and 4 are software RAID 0 stripe where any media for current projects live. These are always regularly backed up on externals anyway.

3. I have also archived on external drives (and recorded the original locations of) all my render folders for both FCS2 and CS5.5 projects. The idea is that I can "put them back" anywhere where they might be needed to save a lot of re-rendering of big complex projects that I may need to re-open in the future. Likewise my iTunes Library, my pictures etc are all backed up on externals.

That's 2 days work right there above!

4. I've got a brand new 1TB WD 7,200 RPM Caviar Black HDD sitting on my desk (identical spec to the 3 year old one that's in the Mac Pro bay 1 that has my Leopard OSX and applications on it).

5. I've also got a Snow Leopard OSX disc sitting on my desk (which Apple shipped to me last week - 10.6.3 version). I had expected it to be a later version than that - as it went another few points on upgrades/bug fixes. However, it might be beneficial, from what I've read, that it is ONLY 10.6.3 since later versions may have broken stuff with FCS2 and FCP 6.0.6 (I believe - but help me out here if you know details).

What I've decided to do is remove and store my current HDD in bay 1 and replace it with the new, virgin HDD and then do a clean install of Snow Leopard on that. Then instal FCS2 and then instal Adobe CS 5.5.1 from all the original applications discs that I have, update to CS5.5.2 and then....test and test and test!!!!

I'll let you know in a few days, maybe a week, as to how that goes.

If it goes well, I'll place an order for the graphics card and instal that in about a weeks time. If I have problems with Snow Leopard and FCS2, no sweat, I'll just put the original Leopard 10.5.8 OSX HDD back in bay 1 and be satisfied that at least I gave it my best shot and did not waste the money on the graphics card upgrade. In case of real problems, I also have the extra image on an external HDD, not to mention the Time Machine disc as well.

Phew, I hope this is all worth it!

It's a belt and braces approach - I hope - but I'm no OSX guru so let me know if I missed anything before I start! (which may be tomorrow - but certainly by the weekend). I need a break from watching lots of progress bars on my screens right now! ;-)

Do you want us to start a collection for you Andy, I'm sure your cat still needs some food.

Have fun and enjoy your new setup.

Cheers Vincent!

Just a quick update for others that may tread this route.

Spent all day loading and updating. I ended up at 10.6.8 (as the "Mac OSX Combined Utility" software update took me straight to that version from the 10.6.3 I loaded off the software disk). I was not expecting it to do that but, in the end I thought, what the heck, I might as well try it out. The worst case scenario would be I just wipe the HDD and start again.

Once I was satisfied I'd got the OS "plateaued" with all the very latest OSX, Java, Flash etc. updates etc., I then loaded FCS2 off all the discs. That was with FCP 6.0.1 and again, via a load of software updates, I got that to FCP 6.0.6 and all the other "Pro tools" updates etc. by mid-afternoon.

Then I installed QuickTime 7.6.6 (off the Snow Leopard disc) and made sure that worked as expected and set it as the default player etc.

So, feeling brave, I opened a 2 year old FCP document in a project I'd left on the RAID 0 discs. I had to do about 5 minutes of re-rendering of the timeline (some red bars) and then I tried exporting a 1080p QuickTime movie using my typical custom settings and.... SO FAR everything has been flawless!!!!!

I will say rendering is slow as molasses compared to Adobe CS 5.5.2 (I sometime forget just how dramatic a change that's been over the last 7-8 months - so much better!!!)

I'll do a bit testing with Final Cut projects and tasks the next few days and then, if all looks promising (no kernel panics, beach balls etc. etc.) I'll start loading Adobe CS 5.5.2 Production Premium and a few other Apps and test all that out.

Looks like a good start to my Phase 2 (get an OS capable of running a NVIDIA graphics card with CUDA support). If this carries on well then I'll be ordering that new graphics card sooner rather than later.

Right, hot evening, successful day, suns out (rare this year). I'm off to have a beer or two!

Another update - Still looking good!

After another day of loading back software/watching progress bars/updating all the latest patches I've now got Adobe CS 5.5.2 running nicely (as judged by some recent projects I've just tried re-opening etc.). A few more brief tests on opening legacy FCP projects indicates everything is looking good with FCS2 too. I still need to do some tests on Compressor, DVDSP etc. through [but if they screw up I'm no so bothered as I now use Adobe for most of my encoding etc. anyway, as it's so much faster than the FCS2 equivalent applications]. If needed, I have FCS2 on my MBP which is still on Leopard and running just fine anyway.

I've also been pleased to find that a number of my other applications (lots of non-NLE stuff - like my website authoring software, direct CD printing software, various network printers and scanners etc.) all work just fine in Snow Leopard/were very easy to set-up again.

More NLE testing the next few days. Then, once I'm happy that "all is wonderful", I'll make a new back-up Disk Image and that'll go in the safe. Then if anything ever goes horribly wrong with my OS X set-up I can just go back to that within minutes.

Looks like I'll be ordering that NVIDIA card early next week then! Can't wait to further leverage the effects boost that will give me with CS 5.5.2. (which in truth is running very snappily already).

Once I've got that all working well, then I'll have reached my 3 year old Mac Pro updating goal. I should have a nice stable, even faster editing system, yet it'll still have all the legacy flexibility I need too. Then I can "lock it down" for another few years and get back to proper work!!!!

A few months down the road, about the only other thing I might consider would be to move up to CS 6, of course. However, I'm still reading about lots of worrying issues on the Adobe forum (and it seems to me that it is especially Mac users that are having problems). I'll not rush that next step - I'm sure Adobe will be working hard to fix the bugs and it'll all be sorted soon.

OK, now I've had a day or so testing I've come up against a big problem which has caused me to revert back to 10.5.8.

Despite the ONLY differences between both my boot disks being the OS X version (10.5.8 or 10.6.8), all other software being the same (and fully up to date in both cases), I'm experiencing jerky video playback in the viewer/canvas of CS 5.5.2 in 10.6.8, which is especially noticeable on any panning shots etc. However, the exact same clips give butter smooth playback in a CS 5.5.2 project running in 10.5.8. Both when set to Full Resolution (setting it lower has no benefit anyway).

This is with 1080p50 28Mbps AVCHD (from TM900) and 1080p25 XCDAM 35Mbps VBR (EX3) raw footage on my internal RAID 0 (I've not tested 7D H.264 clips yet - it's still early days).

I've triple checked everything is the same in the projects (preferences, settings, render file locations, cleaned my media cache and re-rendered etc.) but it's always the same result. I can get everything to run beautifully and smooth with CS 5.5.2 in 10.5.8 (it's a real joy) but I get jerky playback in 10.6.8 (which is a real pain!)

This is with either OS version's HDD slotted directly into Bay 1 of the Mac Pro, i.e. not comparing them with one docked in the FW800 Icy Box dock by the way. I can boot from either easily with one HDD in the dock but wanted to eliminate any difference when analysing this.

So I'm now stumped!!!

I keep thinking it must be a setting I've overlooked but, like I said, I've triple checked and I can't work it out. I'll keep working on it for as long as I can. However, I certainly don't feel like spending a lot of dosh on a new NVIDIA Quadro 4000 PNY Graphics card that will only run in 10.6.8 or above until I understand why this is happening. My worst fear is that I spend that money and end up with a system that is worse to use than my existing butter smooth 10.5.8/ATI 4870 system! After all, the GPU acceleration from CUDA is not (as far as I understand it) going to affect HD video playback or indeed reduce final render times (as those are CPU dependent - but I'm no expert in all this). What it will do is use CUDA to render out effects on the timeline faster...(please correct me if I've miss-understood this). Generally, I'm pretty pleased with how fast my system works anyway with CS 5.5.2 under 10.5.8 - but we always want more don't we!

By the way, in case it might be important, the 10.6.8 OS version also has QuickTime 7.6.6 installed, as well as QTX of course (the QT7 is the optional download directly off the Apple OS X Snow Leopard disc). This was installed before I put CS 5.5.2 on the drive as I wanted the QuickTime Pro features that you get with FCS2 also installed.

Anyone got any ideas as to why this might be happening? I'm trawling all the Apple/Adobe etc. forums I can find and tried a few other things but so far have drawn a complete blank as to why the same hardware is giving me such a difference in performance between Leopard and Snow Leopard.

OK, I had another go at this today.

Completely wiped the Snow Leopard system I've been building/trouble shooting the last few days on that spare HDD and did a completely new fresh install of Snow Leopard 10.6.3, then updated everything to 10.6.8. and made sure there were no further updates needed (lots of restarts but got that done in about 90 minutes).

Then installed CS 5.5.1 Production Premium and updated that to 5.5.2 after another restart (about another hour).

I did not install anything else.

Opened a new Prem Pro AVCHD2 (1080p50) project and basically set everything thing up at the factory defaults. Imported some 1080p50 clips and rendered the timeline so it was all green bar at the top. Bad news. They still stutter/give choppy playback in the Program/Canvas Viewer on my second monitor.

I've got work to do so this evening I pulled the drive and swapped back in my superbly smooth running 10.5.8. All is well again. I've started a new project with those very same clips used for the test today and it's all performing perfect.

I've spent about 5 days at this so now I give up. It seems my 2.66Ghz 8-Core Nehalem Model 4.1 Mac Pro with ATI 4870 graphics card and 32GB of RAM cannot run as well under Snow Leopard as it can under Leopard. I have NO IDEA why not, which makes me feel well out of my comfort zone, but I can't risk £700 odd on a new CUDA graphics card with this unknown issue lurking. I'm very techie and a superb problem solver but I can't work this one out!

Ah well, apart from a £26 SL disc that's good money I've not wasted that can go towards a 5DMkIII/Sony A99/FS700/C300 (insert camera model of choice - depending upon how rich I feel when I eventually get round to buying another one!)

Heck for £700 odd I'm well on the way towards a razor fast Windows 7 PC that'll no doubt run Production Premium at lighting speed judging by how well my 2 year old Windows 7 Core i7 box (that sits next to my Mac Pro) runs Vegas Pro.

If anyone has any ideas as to what to try next to cure this choppy playback in 10.6.8 I'm all ears. Thanks!

Andy,

I just want to add my two cents. I won't second-guess you by going through everything you've done. Watch carefully for compatibility between the different software (OS X 10.6, Adobe CS6) and any non-OEM graphics card you put in. If reviving old projects is needed, then you should keep the old OS X, the old CS install, the old hard disk, the old graphics card, the old everything. You simply have no way to ensure your old projects will still work if you're going to upgrade hardware and software so liberally on Apple hardware. Apple is pretty narrow about what works with what so software companies make the same assumptions. If your clients are paying for it, then it's a legitimate business model.

And by the way, you describe 1080p50 as "nothing too taxing". ROFLMAO! I'm currently rendering a 10 minute 1080p50 Premiere project on my MacBook Pro and it's going to take 22 hours.

Richard

"I'm currently rendering a 10 minute 1080p50 Premiere project on my MacBook Pro and it's going to take 22 hours."

You are doing something wrong Richard, it shouldn't take more than 15 minutes. What settings are you using?

Vincent,

Applying colour correction to HD clips makes my MacBook Pro chug a fair bit. Applying the Warp stabilizer can slow it down considerably. Applying the Neat Video reduce noise plugin makes it ridiculously slow. Put all three together and my MBP becomes an unresponsive toaster oven. Still, at least this way I get to see the real world while it renders.

Richard

It sounds like you need a Mercury Playback Engine, nvidia cards offer this facility. My system (Win 7 PC 64 bit) flies, I can add Warp, Colour corrections and several other filters to 1080p footage and there is no bottle neck in the system even with .3 HD multi camera tracks on the timeline

I have the 13" MBP, which uses an on-CPU-die Intel HD 3000. It's hardly upgradeable.

Obviously to do video editing on Apple hardware you should be using a Mac Pro. But they're so expensive and Apple may not have much enthusiasm for keeping the line alive and competitive...

Richard

Your only option is then to "get to see the real world while it renders" or just employ the render process whilst you have your lunch etc.

Thanks! This has been exactly what I needed to know.

On the assumption that you're referring to all the info I posted in this thread, then I'm glad that the time I took to document it (in painstaking detail) at least helps someone out.