G5 2.5 dualprocessor replacement

[GideonKiers]

Hi there,

A clients dual 2.5 G5 recently broke down (supposedly cooling fluid leaked on to the motherboard ?). They had 3.4 PRO running on that machine. Getting it repaired is about as expensive as buying a new dual core 2.0 G5. According to this MacWorld article, the new dual core G5 machines can be compared with their 2.0 and 2.3 dualprocessor predecessors. It seems I need a machine faster than that, as the previous 2.5 was 'barely' able to run all the layers. It seems though with the new PCIexpress system there's a gain in speed for graphic cards. As I'm not exactly sure where the bottlenecks in catalyst performance are, my question : are these two dualcore machines fast and stable enough to run Catalyst 3.4 Pro ? Anyone ?

Thanks for the help,

Gideon

[Gian]

Here goes my real life experience...

We have 3 Catalyst systems, all with G5's 2.0 DUAL Processors.
We normaly run up to 4 Videos (diferent Layers) at the same time, and pictures or masks on the other layers if we want to.

The speed process, we do not sense in the processor, but in the Hard Drive access, we have in each our systems a 4 HD RAID 0 setup, on the FW800 port, that gives us up to 90 Mb/s (real). Using movies on the DV codec, we are able to run 4 videos in diferent layers at the same time, after than that the videos get SLOW and Jumpy.
We also figure aout, if we put a 5th Video in the Internal HD, also runs OK.
But all depends of the compression of the Videos and the Codecs.
Without compression, we are able to run only 1 Video without Slowing.
In ANIMATION codec, not even 1 plays fine.

So the processors does not seem the slow problem, the Video Codecs and the HD access seems more hard to solve than the G5's itself.

BTW I did tried some HD content, and i was able to play 2 HD with DV codecs. And the rate was arround 28 frames/s acceptable.

Hope that helps.
Gian

[GideonKiers]

Hi there and thanks for your reply. It might help my question if I make a bit more clear.

Client use(d) the dual 2.5 G5 for two outputs, through the builtin vga card.

What the system should minimally be able to do flawlessly on each output is :

mix, crossfade and load
- 1 layer for masking (jpeg or vfx)
- 2 layers for playback of DV footage.

+ They'd prefer not to upgrade to 4.x, but stick to the 3.x version for the time being.
++ The old 2.5 had a raidcard in a pci slot, this has to be changed indeed, for some kind of pci-e slot or a fw800 raid solution like you mentioned.

Anyone ?

[Gian]

We use 2 outputs thru the VGA card, make shure is at least a RADEON 9800 with 128 Mb. we use the RADEON 9800 PRO 256 Mb.

For 2 Video Layers and the rest as a Stills or Masks, you will be OK with a G5 2.0 Dual. Just need to have a good HD solution.

RAID Firewire 800 is what we use, i do know some systems have a SATA PCI Card, making also a RAID configuration, and gets even faster speeds.

V3. of catalyst will work great for shure, we did have those on our systems and just got upgraded to V4.

Richard can be more specific on the minimum req.

Gian

[jasonrudolph]

This come sup all the time, and the single MOST important factor is your hard drives. You say they had a RAID card. What kind? How many drives of what type were connected to it? The processors have plenty of oomph to do what we throw at it, unless you start talking about High Definition video, where the processor can start to be a factor, but only after the harddrives. If they want some sort of a performance increase, the drives are where you are going to get it.
Also, if you are getting a new machine, then it has tiger on it already, go ahead and get enough RAM for it and upgrade to 4.0 the shows are backards compatible with 3.3 from a DMX standpoint, and the additional features are there for them to use at their will once they get comfortable with it.

[GideonKiers]

Like i stated in my question they're not about to spend more on a payed upgrade to 4.0. A new machine has tiger on it indeed. 3.4 is compatible with tiger isn't it ? Harddrive speeds clearly count indeed.

[samsc]

the single most important performance factor is the choice of hard disc system-

SCSI performs the best - and also with scsi there is a great deal of difference between individual drives, drive speeds, and drive capacities.
The fastest drives i tested are the Fujitsu MAU 3147 - 15rpm discs - which will give you 7-8 layers dv.
cheetah 10k7 drives around 6 layers
The slowest drives are the atlas 10k rpm drives - that HES shipped with most of their servers.

The next best single non-scsi discs are Western Digital 10000rpm SATA raptor drives.

Firewire 800 RAID systems DO NOT work that great because they use slow and cheap 7200rpm discs- these are designed for storage capacity - not playing back lots of layers at the same time.

The headline rate of the Firewire 800 RAID is not important. Firewire 800 will not work unless it uses fast drives.

--

The answer is - if you want lots of layers - you have to get a proper disc system. speed of processor is not the most important factor.
Firewire 800 is not good enough most of the time.

If you want to do this on the cheap - ditch anything to do with firewire 800 - and get a single 10000rpm 150gb raptor.

Aside from that - there is no performance change between v3 and v4 catalyst.
And almost no performance change between MacOSX 10.3.x and MacOSX 10.4.x

[samsc]

If you buy a new replacement machine - make sure you get the 7800 graphics card.
the 6600 is NOT great.
You must get the 7800.

There is a big big difference when you start doing complex things.

Apple does not sell 7800 upgrades- they charge an arm and a leg for a spare part-
so you need to specify this when you buy.

[GideonKiers]

right. thanks for the re: indeed fw800 is not the way to go.

for the MAU we need an ATTO UL4S (on pcix machine) yes ?
and for the raptor we can use the normal SATA connection, yes ?

so to compile this a bit :

a new dualcore g5 2.0 with a SCSI disk or 10000+ SATA disk will be able to do 6 layers of DV smoothly with cat 3.4 and osx.4 ?

i assume the 7800 grphx card doesnt help really in straightforward mixing, it's mostly for fx calculations on the gpu right ? what would be needed for 8 layers smooth DV mixing ?

thanks for all the info,

gideon

the single most important performance factor is the choice of hard disc system-

SCSI performs the best - and also with scsi there is a great deal of difference between individual drives, drive speeds, and drive capacities.
The fastest drives i tested are the Fujitsu MAU 3147 - 15rpm discs - which will give you 6 layers dv.

If you want to do this on the cheap - ditch anything to do with firewire 800 - and get a single 10000rpm 150gb raptor.

[samsc]

a new dualcore g5 2.0 with a SCSI disk or 10000+ SATA disk will be able to do 6 layers of DV smoothly with cat 3.4 and osx.4 ?

i assume the 7800 grphx card doesnt help really in straightforward mixing, it's mostly for fx calculations on the gpu right ? what would be needed for 8 layers smooth DV mixing ?

i dont have a dual 2.0ghz pci express machine - i only have a quad g5 -

to get 6 layers you need a minimum of scsi with cheetah 10k7
to get more you need something like the fujitsu MAU 3147 or a seagate 15k4 drive.
I was able to get 8 dv layers on a quad g5 with a single fujitsu MAU 3147 - earlier in the year.

the 10000rpm raptor only does 4 layers.
but has the same performance as the atlas 10k5 drives that highend has been shipping.

to use scsi - of course - you need a scsi card - its the UL5D or UL5S for pci-express machines.
---

really really suggest you get the 7800 graphics card.