Stuart Richardson
Active member
I was just wondering if anyone had any insights regarding the performance of Lightroom on the new Mac Pro, versus a Macbook Pro or a maxed out Mini. Apparently, the Mini is also about to be updated...
The reason I ask is that I am currently using a six year old Mac Pro and it is still working fairly well for me, though it lags in preview generation, 1:1 views and I sorely miss the newer, faster connections like USB3 and Thunderbolt. In mid cycle I upgraded to 14gb of RAM, a fast ATI Radeon card that had 10 bit support (so much for that!!!), and I am running two SSD's...one as a boot, and the other as a scratch disk and for the Lightroom catalog. The images are all on an external eSATA RAID 5 setup from OWC.
Still, time marches on and I was surprised when my laptop (Mid 2012 Macbook Pro Retina) beat my Mac Pro on digilloyd's benchmarks. 6 years is a good run, but I think it might be time to upgrade!
Normally I would just get the new Mac Pro and be set for another five or six years (I have done this twice in a row now)...but this time the Mac Pro in a suitable configuration is nearly double what I paid last time. I think I paid 2999 for my previous model, and this one seems to be between 5000-6000 when spec'ed out. Seeing as I have to pay an additional 25.5% VAT on that, along with a new RAID enclosure etc, it's looking like it might not be the investment it once was. My use in this case is ONLY photography, and about 90% lightroom. I use this computer as my work computer where I do my own photography work and run a printing studio. Most of the work is standard RAW processing and light photoshop work (no layer intensive retouching etc). My image catalog is about 40,000 images, however, so good storage interfaces are important. My main camera is the Leica S2, and clients use anything and everything. I also have a significant proportion of work that is still based on 300-500mb film scans, so RAM and processing help there I guess.
The monitor is a 27" Eizo CG275W, so an iMac is not a consideration...it has to be either a desktop or a Laptop that can run the Eizo well.
What do you guys think? Do I really need to drop 7000 (including taxes) on a Mac Pro, or will 2000 or 3000 on a mac mini/mbp get me 90% of the way there?
Thanks in advance!
The reason I ask is that I am currently using a six year old Mac Pro and it is still working fairly well for me, though it lags in preview generation, 1:1 views and I sorely miss the newer, faster connections like USB3 and Thunderbolt. In mid cycle I upgraded to 14gb of RAM, a fast ATI Radeon card that had 10 bit support (so much for that!!!), and I am running two SSD's...one as a boot, and the other as a scratch disk and for the Lightroom catalog. The images are all on an external eSATA RAID 5 setup from OWC.
Still, time marches on and I was surprised when my laptop (Mid 2012 Macbook Pro Retina) beat my Mac Pro on digilloyd's benchmarks. 6 years is a good run, but I think it might be time to upgrade!
Normally I would just get the new Mac Pro and be set for another five or six years (I have done this twice in a row now)...but this time the Mac Pro in a suitable configuration is nearly double what I paid last time. I think I paid 2999 for my previous model, and this one seems to be between 5000-6000 when spec'ed out. Seeing as I have to pay an additional 25.5% VAT on that, along with a new RAID enclosure etc, it's looking like it might not be the investment it once was. My use in this case is ONLY photography, and about 90% lightroom. I use this computer as my work computer where I do my own photography work and run a printing studio. Most of the work is standard RAW processing and light photoshop work (no layer intensive retouching etc). My image catalog is about 40,000 images, however, so good storage interfaces are important. My main camera is the Leica S2, and clients use anything and everything. I also have a significant proportion of work that is still based on 300-500mb film scans, so RAM and processing help there I guess.
The monitor is a 27" Eizo CG275W, so an iMac is not a consideration...it has to be either a desktop or a Laptop that can run the Eizo well.
What do you guys think? Do I really need to drop 7000 (including taxes) on a Mac Pro, or will 2000 or 3000 on a mac mini/mbp get me 90% of the way there?
Thanks in advance!