Which Mac Pro?

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Archive 2009 · Which Mac Pro?

kirstin
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p.1 #1 · Which Mac Pro?

I'm going to get an 8 core mac pro.

I'm torn between the 2.2 or the 2.6 processor. With 16GB Ram (2x8 2GB) I can't afford the 2.6 but will stretch if it's a significant speed boost in LR.

In a day I'll shoot 1-2k photos and I'm currently using a iMac - Snow Leopard 64 - Lightroom 64:

Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 3.06 GHz
Memory: 4 GB

But it's not fast enough for my patience or work load.

I also use FCP 7 to edit with the 5D II movie files.

I'm about to drop a small fortune but need advice if you have it as I'm not a nerd.

Sep 29, 2009 at 10:05 AM

jcolman
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p.1 #2 · Which Mac Pro?

Kirstin,

This help me to make up my mind when shopping for a mac pro

http://macperformanceguide.com/index.html

Sep 29, 2009 at 06:35 PM

Mister Bean
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p.1 #3 · Which Mac Pro?

I'm running a Vista machine with a single core i7 processor, and with it, disk access time is more of an issue than processor speed in Lightroom. I would guess that the faster processor isn't going to make a huge difference and there are better ways to spend the extra money - like bigger, better, and more monitors.

Speaking of which, what are you planning to use for monitors?

Buying RAM upgrades from Apple (and most other manufacturers) is very expensive. I recommend buying the minimum possible and upgrading it yourself. You can easily save a few hundred dollars that way.

Sep 29, 2009 at 07:47 PM

richhrly
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p.1 #4 · Which Mac Pro?

Mister Bean wrote:
Buying RAM upgrades from Apple (and most other manufacturers) is very expensive. I recommend buying the minimum possible and upgrading it yourself. You can easily save a few hundred dollars that way.

+1 on that, get Crucial ram or similar to fit.

I'm coming up to the point where I need to get a mac pro (so I can take advantage of my student discount and get a massssssivly discounted AppleCare plan!) and I'm speccing things up and having a wonder. Let us know what you go for!

Sep 29, 2009 at 07:57 PM

Hammy
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p.1 #5 · Which Mac Pro?

If I had to get a Mac, I would be tempted upgrade the other components third party also.

Most programs do NOT scale well with lots of CPUs - yet. They may in the near future - it may be your next computer before you see/realize a noticable difference.

As mentioned - hard drive speed is probably the biggest bottleneck that most computers face today - in the eyes of photographers who are reading/writing/processing lots of large files.

Second priority would be memory - with 64bit, more memory can be accessed - but again, it is so new, that many programs still don't capitalize or need that much memory.

CPU speed would be determined by what processing you do - in batch, or manually, etc... The more the better - to a point. If it takes 7 seconds to process image A at 2.2Ghz, is it worth the extra $$ to process it at 2.6Ghz in 6 seconds?

I'd look at SSDs for pure speed, or RAID for space and speed - both will be relatively spendy compared to a single, large drive - but this is where you'll realize probably the largest gain in performance.

For reference: my company takes up to 100,000 images per day. We can process 800 images per minute - which is nothing more than rotate and shrink them down to a web sized viewable image. But we download, process and mirror (to second server) all these images all day. We run a single quad-core CPU at 2.93Ghz with 4Gb memory, but have 7x Velociraptor drives in RAID10 (1 hot spare) that gives me 900Gb of VERY fast, redundant file space.

Sep 29, 2009 at 09:17 PM

Mister Bean
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p.1 #6 · Which Mac Pro?

Just a quick note on RAID in case you decide that it's a worthwhile expense. Avoid RAID 0, which is two striped drives with no parity. This means that half of the data from each of your files is put on each of the drives. Lose one drive, you lose everything, and with two drives, the likelihood of failure is twice as high as with just one drive.

Sep 29, 2009 at 09:31 PM

Scott Moore
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p.1 #7 · Which Mac Pro?

If your thinking on dropping a wad on a mac pro, perhaps you should check out Psystar.
http://www.psystar.com/ they sell pc towers complete with mac OS and you can get a tower that is better than the most beefed up mac pro in some instances for a fraction of the cost. Well worth looking into.

Oct 01, 2009 at 12:20 AM

colinm
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p.1 #8 · Which Mac Pro?

Scott Moore wrote:
Well worth looking into.

Sure, if you want an unstable computer with lousy support that you can't update as bugfixes and security updates come out.

Oct 01, 2009 at 12:44 AM

Scott Moore
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p.1 #9 · Which Mac Pro?

I know psystar has it's serious flamers and possibly for good reason, but the more I think about it, the more I think it could have the potential to be a great machine for its raw horsepower. company psystar screens the apple updates to make sure they don't turn your comp into a brick, which may come back to bite you in the future. So you still have updateablilty even though it is somewhat hindered. The computers they ship, according to people who bought them are super stable & run all the software I'm interested in like photoshop & final cut studio (unless they perform apple updates straight from the apple site that weren't passed by psystar then you could end up with a brick)

And there is also the legal battle issue to take into account. They may not be around in a year's time to ensure future upgradeability. But even still. A psystar looks feasable to me.

Let me give you my vulcan logic to it all. My current computer upgrade schedule seems to be clocking in at $3-4K per year & half-2 years. My production computer is meant to run only production software like FCP & PS, Which currently are supported by psystar which currently support the cameras I use (50D, EX1, & soon 5D II) If I don't updrage my cameras every month when new ones come out, I should be fine working without constant upgrades. If I can live without the upgrades for a couple of years and gain a significant boost in raw power for a relatively low price point, I'll jump in. If I still continue what seems to be my upgrade schedule, by the time I feel the pressure to have more hardware for various reasons, in 1-2 years, I will have at least had a beefy computer in it's time for a fraction of the cost. It's all got a finite lifetime anyway, to me it seems like a calculated risk. That said, my mode of operation probably doesn't mesh with everyone elses, and that's fine.

I read an article back when OS tiger was in fashion that Moby stated that he was still producing with macs running OS9. It was working for him, even though the majority had moved on to newer things.

I should have stated the potential cons in my previous post though, I'm sorry.

Oct 01, 2009 at 02:20 AM

The Image
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p.1 #10 · Which Mac Pro?

Go here www.barefeats.com that'll give you all the speed tests for the mac pros

Oct 06, 2009 at 07:38 PM

SoundHound
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p.1 #11 · Which Mac Pro?

I just replaced my scratch drive with a 128 Gb SSD only to find a paltry 15% in store/open time for big (220Mb) image files.

Oct 18, 2009 at 03:05 AM

paparazzinick
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p.1 #12 · Which Mac Pro?

honestly i would go quad not 8 and get the 2.9

Oct 25, 2009 at 02:02 AM

MuratH
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p.1 #13 · Which Mac Pro?

Hej Guys.. Just my 2 cents:

I have built my own computer, with everything on it like 4gb of 1600 mhz ram, quad 2.67 ghz processor, 12 mb cache, great video card, great sound card etc etc

I included a superb 25 inch screen, 2 tb harddrives, beautiful desktopcase, the best mouse, keyboard, printer, for a total price of 2500 euro's.

Just the computer, without screen, printer, mouse, keyboard etc. just costs around 1500 euro. It's the fastest computer I've seen and heard of. Even friends of min in the IT world call it monster..

I've looked at the price of it at Apple.com and it was around 5000 euro's.

Conclusion: Find a person who knows alot of hardware and build one together. The money saved in this process: Please send it to me so I can buy some pro gear :P

Oct 28, 2009 at 01:40 PM

armandcp
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p.1 #14 · Which Mac Pro?

My 2 cents. Although I am unix guy and Mac OS is Unix at it's core, I have to say that I am more than disappointed, at least with Snow Leopard. Totally inept (not to say inexistent) support from Apple. It has good stuff too, but for the money, not worth it IMO. For me at least, spending about 2500 bucks on a virtually piece of junk (or not as good - let alone better - as a Windows machine) is just not warranted. Did I mention upgrades are just a financial overkill ? Wish I could go back in time and make a better decision. But I have to stick with what I have until I can afford to change it. Sigh.

Oct 28, 2009 at 01:50 PM

justruss
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p.1 #15 · Which Mac Pro?

Consider the Core i7 (8 virtual cores) or Core i5 quad-core iMac with the 27-inch screen.

As another poster mentioned, I don't think you'll see a huge jump going from 4 cores to 8 cores yet. The big advantages to the Mac Pro (though it costs SO much more, specially considering the incredible screen that comes with the iMac) are: More space for internal drives, e-sata.

Oct 28, 2009 at 01:52 PM

Pixel1970
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p.1 #16 · Which Mac Pro?

armandcp wrote:
My 2 cents. Although I am unix guy and Mac OS is Unix at it's core, I have to say that I am more than disappointed, at least with Snow Leopard. Totally inept (not to say inexistent) support from Apple. It has good stuff too, but for the money, not worth it IMO. For me at least, spending about 2500 bucks on a virtually piece of junk (or not as good - let alone better - as a Windows machine) is just not warranted. Did I mention upgrades are just a financial overkill ? Wish I could go back in time and make a better decision. But I have to stick with what I have until I can afford to change it. Sigh.
I'm very surprised by this. Snow Leopard has been great for me! Every new Apple product comes with a standard 90 day telephone support, so I don't know what you're talking about there.
The only problem is SL is waiting for the developers to support the architecture which is probably on the way. 95% of the software I was using when I upgraded to SL worked just fine and I just got my last update recently so now I'm at 100% and everything is just fine. For a $29 upgrade, how could you go wrong with SL?

Nov 03, 2009 at 01:52 AM

sboerup
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p.1 #17 · Which Mac Pro?

paparazzinick wrote:
honestly i would go quad not 8 and get the 2.9

+1

12GB is faster than 16GB RAM

barefeats.com

Nov 06, 2009 at 08:28 AM

sejanus
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p.1 #18 · Which Mac Pro?

MuratH wrote:

Just the computer, without screen, printer, mouse, keyboard etc. just costs around 1500 euro. It's the fastest computer I've seen and heard of. Even friends of min in the IT world call it monster..

you haven't seen many computers then!

Nov 06, 2009 at 10:40 PM

Brit-007
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p.1 #19 · Which Mac Pro?

As you are doing movie editing then you will benefit with the dual quads. I would purchase the standard apple ram and then go to crucial and purchase 3x4bg to start with. Apple will charge $1300 for the ram and currently crucial is around $870.

For the CPU, you need to go to the barefeets site and decide for yourself if you want to invest in the upgraded CPU. The video editing will take advantage of the extra cores.

Nov 06, 2009 at 11:44 PM

masgrada
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p.1 #20 · Which Mac Pro?

The new 27 inch iMac is where it's at. Its been benchmarking around the Mac Pro.

Nov 24, 2009 at 02:00 AM

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