Hi! 

I‘ve been on Mac for 8 years now, but I’m thinking of switching back to windows due to the new announcements / Prices and lack of announcements reg. Mac Pro.

My PC build would only be running AVID Media Composer (with focus on creative editing, editing with DnxHD proxies, barely any exports / conversion tasks) but I‘m wondering which CPU to pick: Xeon or i7 / i9.

My experience with Media Composer:

On my 2013 Mac Pro (Xeon 6-Core, 64gb ram) everything feels sluggish very quickly (30min sequence, barely any soundeffects). An i7 iMac (2018) stays much more response with the very same sequence.

But the more complex and longer the sequence gets (more sound effects etc.) the worse it gets on the iMac (extremely sluggish), whereas it only gets a little worse on the Mac Pro.

Which CPU should I pick and why? Has anyone of you ever compared the two types using media composer?

Many thanks!

I like the i9 with high core count. I recently built a system based on i9 7980XE (18C/36T), 1080 Ti and 64GB of RAM. Extremely fast.

I think Dom is correct. 

A good rule of thumb - if money is no object, Xeons are worth considering.  If you care about the best "bang-for-the buck", don't even bother looking at a Xeon.  The math will just never work.

I bought a 7940x and while I love it, when my cores are all at 100% I do have flagship envy.

I say go for the 7980xe or the refreshed model 9980xe.  I love x299 and HEDT, can't believe I was in quad world before this.

cls105:

I bought a 7940x and while I love it, when my cores are all at 100% I do have flagship envy.

Puget Systems did a benchmark test between all the i9 processors and found that the 7940x hit the sweet spot out-performing the 7980xe for transcoding and warp stabilizing tasks in Premiere.  Not sure how this relates to performance in MC but it's interesting to look at their results. I'm building a system around the 7940x at the moment. Should be a step up from my i7 960. Lol

I got the 7940x because of that Puget article.

I am appreciative of their info, but I still wish I would have gotten the 18 core.

I don't think they overclock at all.  And a motherboard overclocks very simply with presets in the bios.

So im pretty sure the 18 core can achieve almost the same clock speed as the 7940x.

Often when I transcode, export, or mixdown I get 100% usage, and that means an 18 core would do it faster :)

I recently switched motherboards and havent had the chance to overclock.  I can probably go to 4.4ghz with proper cooling.

But just know that many Media Composer fx (built in fx/plugins) do not render that fast.  But thats Avid's old coding, not the cpu's fault.

Good luck with your choice.. btw I got my cpu at ava direct, they have affirm financing.  But their return policy is horrific (crazy restocking fees and no price adjusting if it goes on sale).

And here is an export with a conservative overclock of 4.3ghz (stock cpu - not delidded).  This is with a $40 120mm small liquid cooler.  My cpu temps are OK (checking with core temp).

This is a with an matx evga x299 board.  I sometimes have it in a 2u rackmount with a low profile 1050 ti but this is with my 1080 ti.

With the 2u case i have the radiator sticking out of the front of the 2u chasis.

No way xeon gets close to 4.3ghz on all cores.. And neither does the imac pro with its "cooling"

I love HEDT.  

Very cool. I'm still waiting for the GPU to complete my build. Hopefully soon. I am putting a P4000 in this one but I may switch to dual 1080 Ti GPUs at some point. 

Now that is getting your value for money!!!  What sort of peak temps are you getting?  I run a hex core i7 5820 at 4Ghz very stable for a couple of years now with a simple water cooler.  Peaks about 75C which is too hot to touch but acceptable I believe!

Wow... thanks for the great thread with excellent information.

I'm starting the process of burning-in my new i9-7949X build. Seems very peppy (compared to my ancient i7-960). I am overclocking mildly to 4.2 GHz (with memory clocked to 2666 MHz). This is the Asus X299 default tweak. The memory I used can clock much higher but I'm starting with a very conservative OC for now.

One thing that's worth noting (and I'm really repeating what others have mentioned) - for most operations within MC, I see only two of my 28 cores (14 x 2 HT) actually busying themselves (things like playback) which is why fast, fewer cores is recommended. I know if I transcode with Squeeze or TmpGEnc that I can push all cores to 100% and I will be testing that shortly. I haven't noticed the core count during rendering in MC (as I mentioned, I'm just starting to bring-up the new build) but I'd like to see how many cores MC uses (both foreground and background rendering and transcoding)...

Cheers

Hello again! Has been a while...

Thanks for all your replies. 

To sum up what i‘ve Been reading from you and what i‘ve been experiencing myself:

xeons are not worth the extra money and haven’t been since at least avid V4.5. Back then, my dual core MacBook Pro was way faster than my macPro (Xeon), because MC couldn’t and still can‘t address more than 2 cores (while editing).

An i7 (iMac/PC) is snappier than a 6-Core Xeon macPro, but has it‘s limits, when it comes to sequences longer than 30mins (e.g. feature films). An i9 with high frequency would be preferred.

I‘m going to wait up till the 2019 announcements from Apple (who knows: maybe the new modular Mac Pro will have an i9 option...) and I will have a look at the new Mac mini. Even though I‘d love to build my own PC I‘m not really that much into going back to windows (,yet).

Thanks again!