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Archive 2013 · Imac or Mac Tower or Macbook Pro with Monitor

  
 
Scott Stoness
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Imac or Mac Tower or Macbook Pro with Monitor


I have a couple of friends that are considering an imac. Both are serious hobbiest with canon cameras - wildlife and family sports. One is mostly about hockey for youth and printing for fellow moms and the other is mostly about mammal photography.

My inclination is that either a Mac Tower or MacBook Pro hooked up to an external monitor is better option than Imac. I have not looked at Imac much but my impression is that the downside is:
- Not very upgradeable - will need total replacement in 3 years
- Not much hard drive capacity. Can't put dual disks and mirror for redundancy
- Screen is too glossy and why would you not buy the best screen and then you can take it with you to the next platform.

Alternatively, if you were cost conscious: the macbook pro is pretty pretty cheap and cheaper to swap out and if matched with an external drive and monitor and keyboard and mouse, gives you a solid system that won't cost you big money to upgrade in 3 years ($1300 each 3 years). Plus you can have mobility if disconnected.

Or Tower, which obviously is best and cheapest for upgradability and space for hard drives etc. But currently does not have thunderwire or usb3, so I would wait on that. The downside is price and not mobility.

Question 1: Imac or Tower or I macbook and why?

Question 2: What monitor if not Imac?

Question 3: What configuration of imac if imac? My gut feel is max out the ram, ssd, max out the disk size.

Question 4: If macbook pro, retina? It strikes me as not needed on a small screen, if connected to macbook with monitor?

Thanks for any advice. Personally I lean away from imac because you are stuck with the monitor, its expensive compared to mac book pro, and if you have unlimited budget, I would get Tower and Macbook pro.

Scott



May 15, 2013 at 08:14 AM
jforkner
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Imac or Mac Tower or Macbook Pro with Monitor


First, I don't understand what the brand of camera or the subject-matter of the shots has to do with which computer to buy.

Second, I think you're selling the iMac short. My 2-year old model has one external drive plus a RAID array (Drobo) attached and works well. The glossy screen, if oriented properly, is not an issue and produces nice, crisp images. I find the compact nature of the iMac a nice change from the tower-based PC I used to use. And I think the notion of upgradeability is overrated---if properly configured upfront, all the most you'll need to do is add/enhance the drives.


Jack



May 15, 2013 at 08:54 AM
Scott Stoness
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Imac or Mac Tower or Macbook Pro with Monitor


jforkner wrote:
First, I don't understand what the brand of camera or the subject-matter of the shots has to do with which computer to buy.

Second, I think you're selling the iMac short. My 2-year old model has one external drive plus a RAID array (Drobo) attached and works well. The glossy screen, if oriented properly, is not an issue and produces nice, crisp images. I find the compact nature of the iMac a nice change from the tower-based PC I used to use. And I think the notion of upgradeability is overrated---if properly configured upfront, all the most you'll need to do
...Show more

Thanks Jack. I agree on brand. Wildlife/Sports people do less processing and take more pictures is my experience. Whereas landscape guys do lots of photoshop and hdr processing that is really processing intensive. Eg. A landscape with d800 expanded to 16 bit tiff and stitched could result in a several gigabyte file that you are working on. Typically I shoot 3 shots bracketed and blend for landscape, then convert using dpp to tiff to correct lens, then blend hdr with single shot. So each shot can be a gigabyte or more. This is less likely with wildlife. I have 16 Tb hard drive on my tower with a 16 TB drobo as backup and 32gb of ram an solid state drive with two very large monitors. This is not possible with imac, but might be okay for wildlife/sports.

I appreciate your input. Did you calibrate your imac with spyder or something and do you have trouble matching your screen color to your print color?


Edited on May 15, 2013 at 11:00 AM · View previous versions



May 15, 2013 at 10:52 AM
skasol
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Imac or Mac Tower or Macbook Pro with Monitor


I have the new imacs hooked up to an external Raid drive and I absolutely love it. couldn't be happier with the screen quality and the speed of the machine. good luck


May 15, 2013 at 10:59 AM
WAYCOOL
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Imac or Mac Tower or Macbook Pro with Monitor


None of the above. Think Hackintosh.
http://www.tonymacx86.com/351-building-customac-buyer-s-guide-may-2013.html



May 15, 2013 at 11:09 AM
Bernie
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Imac or Mac Tower or Macbook Pro with Monitor


I recently replaced my 2007 iMac running SL. I'm still using the same multi TB Seagate drives that I had before. I did upgrade my external work HD to thunderbolt from USB3 for marginal improvement. You might relace every 3 years if you don't plan for future software and its demands on processing. I've been upgrading my external work HD through the years to 3TB and dual Time Machine HD to 3 and 4 TB.

I did go for top of the line iMac with the hybrid 3 TB HD and 16GB with another 16GB I installed myself. Get one with a powerful GPU since PP software (including PS) is using more and more of that.

I was hesitant about the display as well, but work in a room with shades closed, so no real issue... Enjoy!



May 15, 2013 at 11:13 AM
Dave_EP
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Imac or Mac Tower or Macbook Pro with Monitor


Well.... I have all three and one more.... the MacMini.

• MacPro - 8TB internal HDDs with 8 cores @ 2.8Ghz - 16GB 800Mhz DDR2 RAM

• MacBook Pro i7 2.5Ghz 1TB internal & 1TB thunderbolt external - 16GB RAM

• MacMini Server i7 2.3Ghz 2x1TB internal drives plus external if I need it (T-Bolt or USB3)

• iMac 3.2Ghz Core 2 Duo with 8GB ram and 1TB internal HDD.

[EDIT - and a hackintosh too - see next post)

For what I work on most (Video and Photo) the MacBook Pro and Mac Mini are FASTER than the 8 core MacPro, even though their CPUs are slower. Why? Probably because both have 16GB 1600Mhz DDR3 compared to the MacPro 800Mhz DDR2. That makes a HUGE difference. The GPU is much better in the MBP than the MacMini, so the MBPis actually the fastest machine I have today - even faster than my overclocked i7 windows machines when running Premiere Pro and Media Encoder on the same source files! Needless to say our jaws were on the floor when we saw that (and my son prefers Windows!).

For some video work the Mac Pro is faster than the MacMini due to the graphics card, but after that there isn't much in it and the MacMini is both quieter and cheeper to run.

The iMac is the slowest because it's an older model (2009) Core-2-Duo.

Now, if I had to go buy a new desktop TODAY (and not wait to see what MacPro gets announced in June) then it would be the 27" i7 iMac. Why? It totally kills the others in speed and has a really nice display. It also has dual t-bolt ports and USB3, whereas my MacPro and MBP only have USB2.

As a second choice, it would depend on whether I wanted a desktop or a laptop. The MacMini is an excellent machine and low power consumption too (see below). If I needed a laptop then the MacBookPro would be the obvious choice.

POWER
The MacPro draws 245 watts when IDLE and 336 watts when rendering video plus another 176 watts for the monitor.

The MacMini draws 13 watts when IDLE and 21 watts while rendering. That's a HUGE difference in running costs! I leave the MacMini running as my server and offload exports and renders to it over night where needed.

The MacBookPro draws 22 watts IDLE with the screen closed (using with external monitor) and 72 watts open and rendering. Of course you need to add the monitor power consumption when using an external monitor.

I haven't checked the iMac yet.

The new 27" iMac uses only 76 watts IDLE including the screen ON. It raises to a little over 110 watts when rendering. This is still only a quarter of the MacPro with a monitor attached yet it's also a lot faster.

Now, check the cost of your own electricity to run these babies. I worked out that my MacPro has cost me £1480+ in electricity to run since I bought it. Over the same period the new iMac would have cost around a quarter of that. The MacMini is miserly, but then it depends on what monitor you add. If you added my MacPro monitor to the MacMini it would still cost more that twice as much to run as the iMac.

Running costs may mean nothing to you, but if you sit down and actually calculate the cost of running your computers over 3 - 5 years it can add up to a lot of money and makes it worth considering as part of the total cost of ownership.

So how much does it actually code to run per watt? I worked out that at my current usage it does me about £1.11 ($1.72) per watt per year to run.

Edited on May 15, 2013 at 12:16 PM · View previous versions



May 15, 2013 at 12:05 PM
Dave_EP
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Imac or Mac Tower or Macbook Pro with Monitor


WAYCOOL wrote:
None of the above. Think Hackintosh.
http://www.tonymacx86.com/351-building-customac-buyer-s-guide-may-2013.html


Err... yeah....No. I have a hackintosh too. As soon as I can replace it with an iMac I will. It's simply not as reliable as a real mac. The last OS update killed the hacked audio drivers and the one before that did something else I can't remember. It's just a maintenance nightmare.

It's a 3.4Ghz i7 with 16GB 1600Mhz DDR3 and decent GPU (tried GTX570, 5770 and 5870) and the MPB I have is still faster!



May 15, 2013 at 12:08 PM
woos
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Imac or Mac Tower or Macbook Pro with Monitor


Homebuilt, overclocked pc w/Windows?


May 15, 2013 at 12:11 PM
ggreene
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Imac or Mac Tower or Macbook Pro with Monitor


Really depends on your need to be mobile for your computing needs. If that's the case you really have no choice but to get a laptop. I'm upgrading my computer as well and the iMac is what I have decided to get. When comparing it against a Macbook Pro Retina it just has a big advantage in CPU, memory, and GPU for a similar price.

This is what I have spec'd out:

27" iMac
3.4 Ghz Quad i7
8GB memory (will upgrade to 32GB through OWC for $300)
256GB SSD (OS and programs)
GTX 680 2GB Video
$2600 (educational pricing)

The new screens are suppose to have better reflection reduction so I'm not too worried about that. I already have some spare drives so I'm looking at the Datatale 4 bay TB RAID enclosure for main storage. USB3/TB external drives for backup/archive.

Part of me still wants to see if Apple will release an updated Mac Pro this year but to be honest I just don't do enough heavy processor stuff to justify the cost of Xeon processors.



May 15, 2013 at 12:15 PM
aubsxc
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Imac or Mac Tower or Macbook Pro with Monitor


Dave_EP wrote:
Err... yeah....No. I have a hackintosh too. As soon as I can replace it with an iMac I will. It's simply not as reliable as a real mac. The last OS update killed the hacked audio drivers and the one before that did something else I can't remember. It's just a maintenance nightmare.


A hackintosh can be problematic with OSX updates, and is best avoided unless you are willing to spend some time fixing compatibility issues as they arise with new versions of OSX. I agree with you on this point.

It's a 3.4Ghz i7 with 16GB 1600Mhz DDR3 and decent GPU (tried GTX570, 5770 and 5870) and the MPB I have is still faster!

Unless you are running a first generation i7 on your hackintosh, a desktop CPU would be a lot more powerful than a mobile cpu running in a laptop. By necessity, mobile cpus have to be designed to operate on low power and within strict thermal envelopes, which places severe limitations on how many flops the processor can perform. Desktop processors are not subject to the same standards as desktop workstations can be run on much larger power supplies and can be cooled much more efficiently. This doesn't mean that a current MBP cannot be used effectively as a photo editing workstation, just that an equivalent desktop processor from the same generation will have much more processing power compared to the mobile processor used in the MBP.



May 15, 2013 at 12:45 PM
aubsxc
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · Imac or Mac Tower or Macbook Pro with Monitor


Scott, I would stay away from the Mac Pro towers because:

1. the MacPro line has not been updated in a while and they continue to use technology that is about 3 years behind at this point, and

2. the price you pay for a "new" MacPro tower does not reflect the fact that the tech is this dated.

The iMacs have limited upgradability, you are stuck with the monitor, and you need to use expensive third party solutions for adding on storage.

If I were in your shoes I would lean towards the MacBook Pro as they use current generation Intel hardware and decent graphics. And you can add a high end monitor to use the MBP as a workstation, although you still need expensive third party solutions for external storage. As far as monitors are concerned, there are many options available depending on your budget. At the $350 point you can buy a Dell U2410, at about $700 a Dell U2711, and at about $1,000 a Dell U3011, all of which can cover almost the entire Abobe RGB color space.



May 15, 2013 at 12:56 PM
aubsxc
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · Imac or Mac Tower or Macbook Pro with Monitor


ggreene wrote:
Really depends on your need to be mobile for your computing needs. If that's the case you really have no choice but to get a laptop. I'm upgrading my computer as well and the iMac is what I have decided to get. When comparing it against a Macbook Pro Retina it just has a big advantage in CPU, memory, and GPU for a similar price.

This is what I have spec'd out:

27" iMac
3.4 Ghz Quad i7
8GB memory (will upgrade to 32GB through OWC for $300)
256GB SSD (OS and programs)
GTX 680 2GB Video
$2600 (educational pricing)

The new screens are suppose to have better
...Show more


There is no reason to buy an expensive (~$500) GTX 680 GPU unless you game a lot, which is unlikely since you are buying Apple. If you do a lot of rendering and video editing with gpu compute, you may be better off with an Nvidia Quadro based pro GPU (which can also be expensive). If you can't justify spending the money on a quadro gpu or you don't need a pro GPU, you can use a GT640 or GTX650 GPU which will also support OpenCL, OpenGL and CUDA for any functions in PS/LR that can use GPU compute.



May 15, 2013 at 01:17 PM
WAYCOOL
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · Imac or Mac Tower or Macbook Pro with Monitor


Dave_EP wrote:
Err... yeah....No. I have a hackintosh too. As soon as I can replace it with an iMac I will. It's simply not as reliable as a real mac. The last OS update killed the hacked audio drivers and the one before that did something else I can't remember. It's just a maintenance nightmare.

It's a 3.4Ghz i7 with 16GB 1600Mhz DDR3 and decent GPU (tried GTX570, 5770 and 5870) and the MPB I have is still faster!


Well you've done something wrong or made some bad decisions with hardware. A good Hackintosh is not a problem with updates 10.8.1. 10.8.2 and 10.8.3 all took lest than a minute to fix sound problems that were broke in the updates. My Hackintosh is a stable and faster than any 4 core mac made to date. Hackintoshing is not perfect but with the right hardware choices can be relatively worry free and imho the best macs you can use.

ps: my Hackintosh works better with OSX than Windows 8 which still doesn't have drivers for 4 of the USB3 ports.



May 15, 2013 at 01:42 PM
Dave_EP
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p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · Imac or Mac Tower or Macbook Pro with Monitor


WAYCOOL wrote:
Well you've done something wrong or made some bad decisions with hardware.


That may or may not be true, and honestly I'm not going to spend too much time trying to make it better because if I can't reliably update the OS when my software needs the latest OS then while it was a fun experiment, it's not a viable long term solution for me.

I'm running a Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H MOBO with IvyBridge i7, 16GB 1600Mhz DDR3 ram. I don't know how much better it could be without spending stupid money. I followed the recipes to the letter and it all came up first time.

So, if I made a bad decision, that's fine, I guess so did everyone else that followed the recipe.

In terms of desktop vs mobile, I hear you, and I agree with you, so you can imagine our total disbelief when the MBP out performed ALL the other computers, including the OC Windows machine on these video renders. That's why our jaws were on the floor. There is something about that MBP that just makes it fly for certain things. We ran the tests several times and made written notes as well so we weren't getting confused! OTOH, it is slower at de-noising because Neat Video isn't well optimised for it's GPU. Swings and roundabouts.

Either way, I'm not building another hackintosh, I'd rather spend the money and get a proper Mac. While it costs more to start with, the total cost of ownership is lower in the end. A 2 or 3 year old iMac will hold it's value well for resale, whereas trying to sell this home built PC will bring very little reward as things move on quickly in PC land and the components devalue very quickly.

Add to that the increase in power consumption (the hackintosh + monitor idles at 176+172 = 348 watts vs 76 for the new iMac) and so will likely also cost around £200-£300 more to use in electricity over it's useful life.

I've been building 'home' PCs since 1984 and can build one pretty much with my eyes closed. I'm happy for those that have built a hackintosh and are happy to tinker with them as needed etc. It's just not for me.





May 15, 2013 at 02:06 PM
aubsxc
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p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · Imac or Mac Tower or Macbook Pro with Monitor


Dave_EP wrote:
In terms of desktop vs mobile, I hear you, and I agree with you, so you can imagine our total disbelief when the MBP out performed ALL the other computers, including the OC Windows machine on these video renders. That's why our jaws were on the floor. There is something about that MBP that just makes it fly for certain things. We ran the tests several times and made written notes as well so we weren't getting confused! OTOH, it is slower at de-noising because Neat Video isn't well optimised for it's GPU. Swings and roundabouts.


Can you post some actual numbers where you benchmarked the same process on your MBP and compared it with the PC or Hackintosh? The i7 Ivy Bridge quad in your hack is the fastest quad core CPU you can buy today, bar none. A MBP running a mobile Intel i7 quad is not even close in terms of raw compute ability.


Either way, I'm not building another hackintosh, I'd rather spend the money and get a proper Mac. While it costs more to start with, the total cost of ownership is lower in the end. A 2 or 3 year old iMac will hold it's value well for resale, whereas trying to sell this home built PC will bring very little reward as things move on quickly in PC land and the components devalue very quickly.

An iMac uses the same hardware as a PC. While it may hold its resale value better over 3 years, it can cost much more to purchase than a home built PC, and it is severely handicapped with regard to upgrades.

Add to that the increase in power consumption (the hackintosh + monitor idles at 176+172 = 348 watts vs 76 for the new iMac) and so will likely also cost around £200-£300 more to use in electricity over it's useful life.

The Ivy Bridge i7 3770K uses about 77W with all 8 logical processors fully loaded running Prime or IntelBurn, and less than 10W at idle. For most routine tasks in PS/LR you would be hard pressed to push it beyond 40 to 50W. Are you sure you have the power saving modes set up right in your hack?






May 15, 2013 at 02:36 PM
Dave_EP
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p.1 #17 · p.1 #17 · Imac or Mac Tower or Macbook Pro with Monitor


aubsxc wrote:
Can you post some actual numbers where you benchmarked the same process on your MBP and compared it with the PC or Hackintosh? The i7 Ivy Bridge quad in your hack is the fastest quad core CPU you can buy today, bar none. A MBP running a mobile Intel i7 quad is not even close in terms of raw compute ability.


If I still had my notes I'd gladly share them, but they were binned several months ago. My recollection was that on a render of a 30 min (approx) multicam video (4 cameras) and 2 external stereo audio tracks, the MBP beat the hackintosh by some 4 minutes and the MacPro by around 7 minutes, but without my notes I'd have to re-run the tests which is not something I can do in the next day or two. De-Noising (Neat Video) was a LOT slower on the MBP, something like 60% slower.

The quad i7 hackintosh IS marginally faster than my 8 core MacPro (2009 DDR2 ram) for some things and slower on others, but my MacPro hasn't missed a beat since the day it was purchased while the hackintosh has lost it's BIOS settings twice in 8 months and refuses to properly shut down, even with al the 'hacks' installed, which may or may not have something to do with it. It's also running the latest BIOS version too.

An iMac uses the same hardware as a PC. While it may hold its resale value better over 3 years, it can cost much more to purchase than a home built PC, and it is severely handicapped with regard to upgrades.

Correct, it costs more to buy, but typically costs less to run and has a higher resale value. BTW - the iMac uses a lot more mobile technology than a home built PC does, so an iMac will typically not be as powerful as a home built PC where cost was no issue and only the highest grade components are used. Alas that's not your typical home build PC with most people buying one or two revs down from the latest in order to save money.

I rarely find the need to "upgrade" a computer as such, I simply replace it after a few years with a newer model. That's why my 2009 8 core MacPro is still sitting under my desk happily crunching things. While it's starting to get a little long in the tooth it was a beast when I first bought it and it can still do a great job even today. We only sold our 27" i7 iMac because it was a pre-thunderbolt model and wanted faster external HDD throughput. It was purchased from the refurb store (which is where I source most of my apple products saving 15% or more) for £1325 (free carriage) and was later sold for either £1275 or £1295 (I'd have to find the invoice) around 15 or 16 months later. I've never been able to get those sorts of resale percentages from a PC, commercial or home built.


The Ivy Bridge i7 3770K uses about 77W with all 8 logical processors fully loaded running Prime or IntelBurn, and less than 10W at idle. For most routine tasks in PS/LR you would be hard pressed to push it beyond 40 to 50W. Are you sure you have the power saving modes set up right in your hack?


Yes, it's all optimised. It burns more than 280 watts in full flow!

Yes the CPU is fairly efficient, but the MOBO has lots of other components that take power, the HDDs take power, the GPU takes LOTS of power, the fans take power and there is some loss within the PSU itself (may be 10%-15% IIRC). I was measuring at the wall socket, not just the CPU. This is actual watts used by the system, not just one component.

Now compare your 77W (cpu only?) to the MacMini which has a 2.3Ghz i7, 16GB 1600Mhz RAM and TWO HDDs in it drawing only 13W idle and 22W in full flow (four cores at close to 100% and the hyper-threading cores at 50%+) - again measured at the wall so everything is included, and totally in line with the official specs.

Anyway, we'e getting a little off topic here. Sorry to the OP. Computers can be very engaging subjects. There is no single right or wrong answer, be it PC, Mac, hackintosh, Windows or OSX or even Linux. Everyone has their own little variation on requirements

For the record, I voted iMac, but a MacBookPro + Monitor would be my second choice. The retina screen is totally worth it IF your eyes are good enough to run it in the 2880x1600 resolution rather than the 1440x800. The menus can become a little small Having two thunderbolt ports also allows you more flexibility with monitors and external HDDs.

Comparing TB to USB3, my combo TB/USB3 Lacie 1TB drive transfers at around 120MB/s over thunderbolt but only 95MB/s over USB3.



May 15, 2013 at 03:07 PM
ggreene
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p.1 #18 · p.1 #18 · Imac or Mac Tower or Macbook Pro with Monitor


aubsxc wrote:
There is no reason to buy an expensive (~$500) GTX 680 GPU unless you game a lot, which is unlikely since you are buying Apple. If you do a lot of rendering and video editing with gpu compute, you may be better off with an Nvidia Quadro based pro GPU (which can also be expensive). If you can't justify spending the money on a quadro gpu or you don't need a pro GPU, you can use a GT640 or GTX650 GPU which will also support OpenCL, OpenGL and CUDA for any functions in PS/LR that can use GPU compute.


It's just the higher video option on the iMac config which costs an additional $135. I think's it's the mobile version which is no where near that cost. I chose it because I had read that many Photoshop features use the GPU.



May 15, 2013 at 05:19 PM
OntheRez
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p.1 #19 · p.1 #19 · Imac or Mac Tower or Macbook Pro with Monitor


Scott,

Having used pretty much one of everything in personal computing since the mid 80's I'm a bit jaded and find the whole argument about Hacintoshes irrelevant. Sure I've built up boxes from components and all that, but now I just want to get the job done.

I currently have a mid 2010 MacPro (Tower) with dual quad 2.4 GHz processors, 32 GB Ram, the best video card available at the time, and I guess around 4TB of storage configured in different ways. I also have an 11" Mac Air that I take with me on extended shoots to download files and when necessary (say at an event) do first and even final culls. Slower and I really don't recommend it for serious PP. I use Aperture on it.

Someone noted the MacPro hasn't been updated in a while which is true. Supposedly Apple's going to do that this year, but well, I'll believe it when I see it. It will happen, just don't know when nor at what cost.

I can direct you to a business PowerMax that I've worked with for more than 10 years and utterly recommend. They have used Mac everything at attractive prices. One can pick up a generation or so back MacPro for quite a nice price. They also have used laptops and iMacs and do a brisk business in buying/selling used Macs which hold their value remarkably well. For many years I've been buying new from them and trading in my old box for credit against the price. Business wise it works really well. Once you get into this sort of relationship you not only don't pay sales tax (they're in Oregon) they also pay shipping both ways. Great business model.

iMacs can be quite nice if you stuff them with the max RAM when you buy and they can be had new or used at attractive prices. I have so much going on with my main work station that a closed box (well, in this case screen just doesn't work for me. Really it is a function of how much heavy lifting your friends need/want to do. Lots of folks do just fine with a 15" MacBook Pro with at least 8 GB RAM.

For me it's about screen real estate (I have an old 30" monitor), processor power, and RAM. Of course you have to have drive capacity to hold all that stuff and keep it backed up.

My one advice to those buying a new computer is to always buy more than they think they need and get max RAM. The work expands to fill the space.

Robert



May 15, 2013 at 05:48 PM
WAYCOOL
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p.1 #20 · p.1 #20 · Imac or Mac Tower or Macbook Pro with Monitor


ggreene wrote:
It's just the higher video option on the iMac config which costs an additional $135. I think's it's the mobile version which is no where near that cost. I chose it because I had read that many Photoshop features use the GPU.


As far a Photoshop goes the features that use the GPU are mainly the new creative blur filters and Liquify tool and once you get to a mid range Video card the improvements don't gain much. A benchmark of these filters may take 40 seconds on a Intel 4000, 20 seconds on a Nvidia 650 and 18.5 on a Nvidia 685. On a single filter application that may be tenths of a second. If you need the speed great but a mid range card is by far the sweet spot and if you don't use these tools a card won't do much good in Photoshop but will help heat your house.



May 15, 2013 at 07:28 PM
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