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New Nehalem Mac Pro

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robmac

Well-known member
Nice - Apple has also really boosted the bang for the buck and opened up spec range of the Mini and iMac re: max memory, graphics and processor.
 
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LJL

New member
The CS4 performance still is more an Adobe issue, I think. The other apps, like C1 and some others, may really be able to take advantage of the faster speeds in these new Mac Pros, despite the slightly lower clock speeds. Virtually everything else will go faster, but PS....time to rag on Adobe again.

LJ
 
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ddk

Guest
LJL said:
Virtually everything else will go faster, but PS....time to rag on Adobe again.

LJ
Click to expand...
Just a reality check, what else do you think/hope that people around here use would improve that drastically to run out buy a new computer today? Unless you have a very old one of course! I very much doubt that C1, Leaf, Nikon or Canon software are going to get a speed boost, if any, that matters over this past generation. Besides, lets hope that there won't be any unforeseen bugs first!
 
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LJL

New member
ddk said:
Just a reality check, what else do you think/hope that people around here use would improve that drastically to run out buy a new computer today? Unless you have a very old one of course! I very much doubt that C1, Leaf, Nikon or Canon software are going to get a speed boost, if any, that matters over this past generation. Besides, lets hope that there won't be any unforeseen bugs first!
Click to expand...
Reality check is fine, but fact is that any app that is able to access more cores and RAM will benefit a lot. PS is so far behind the curve for that kind of performance that it is nearly laughable. Apps like C1, RAW Developer, Aperture, and others would really fly on these faster machines. While a lot of us do use PS, it is not the only thing to get work done. Further, anybody looking at HD video would really benefit from this upgrade. Check the performance data that is starting to be posted. For folks using more than just PS, it does represent a pretty nice improvement.

I agree that if one has a fairly recent machine, it may not seem like it matters, but for anybody with anything older than a year or two, these new Mac Pros will show significant speed increases. Now, if you do not need it, you should not worry, but I think there are folks that are speed freaks, or that do a lot of heavy duty processing with stuff other than PS, and these new machines will help there. Just my thoughts.

LJ
 
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DougDolde

Guest
Seems strange that the single quad core model maxes out at 8 GB ram. You have to buy the dual quad to use more memory.
 
Guy Mancuso

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
C1 will benefit from the quad cores and dual quads, no question. I want the dual quads myself but going to wait
 
Guy Mancuso

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Which just is not good for photographers. I wonder if they even care about us and Adobe is no freaking help with the 3gb ram limit. Honestly until Adobe does something positive with Ram and 64 bit for Mac than I am just going to wait it out. 9 seconds to process the biggest file I can muster from my back is not shabby at all. Rather spend what money I have on running my laptop with two SSD drives running raid O and the 6gb of ram so I can leave this desktop home when I hit the road and do not have to take the beast anymore. After Moab and 4 wheeling with a Mac Pro in the back , i am done with that stuff.
 
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LJL

New member
Guy,
While there is so much more crunching capability with the Mac Pro, it does come at a steep price. If you already have a good Mac Pro, which I believe you do, that should be enough to carry you for a while.

My thoughts are along a similar line....I am thinking about a souped up 17" MacBook Pro as my "do-it-all" (for a while at least) machine. Drop in a fast 500GB HD, get a nice striped RAID FW800 portable, and another eSATA configuration for desktop use. It will never be as fast as the Mac Pro for seriously big files, but it will be very good, and more importantly, it will be portable. (While I like the size of the 15" MBP more, it just does not have the extra horsepower and RAM expansion of the 17", and that bigger screen is enough to work on for short spells, or plugged into a 30" monitor at the office/studio.)

There comes a point when it seems like it may be better spending more time setting up the shots than having to buy more gear just to process them for corrections. Now there is a heresy that might shock some ;-)

LJ
 
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Scott G

New member
I am very tempted to buy either a new or refurbed Mac Pro. I am limping along with a 1st gen iMac, so no matter what it will be an improvement, correct?

If I decide to do this foolish thing, what are the recommended monitors?

Thanks for the help

Scott
 
Guy Mancuso

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
I put the 4gb chip in my 15 inch MBP for a total of 6gb and it certainly helped a lot. I also have a SSD drive in there as well and it fly's. What we need Apple to do now is make a 15 inch with quad core with 8gb of ram and have dual hard drive slots, so you can load 2 SSD and Raid O them and partition about 30gb of scratch for CS4. Need to make it a fast processor like the top end 17 too. For me i hook these up to monitors that I ship to the locations i am going when i do shows. Plus I have the security at night to take the laptop back to my room as it is today it sits overnight for 12 days in a breakout room. We have security but for the workshops we don't so the laptop is what i want improved. I could do a 17 inch today and drop 2 SSD drives in it but still very expensive
 
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meilicke

Guest
I know I mentioned a raid 0 using external fw800, but I forgot about the express card slot and the ability to do esata with that. While raid 0 over esata with spinning disk would slower than ssd (guess), it would still be fast with lots of space, and a lot cheaper than ssd.
 
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dougpeterson

Workshop Member
Scott G said:
I am very tempted to buy either a new or refurbed Mac Pro. I am limping along with a 1st gen iMac, so no matter what it will be an improvement, correct?

If I decide to do this foolish thing, what are the recommended monitors?

Thanks for the help

Scott
Click to expand...

Disclaimer: My company sells Eizo (along with most other monitor brands).

Yeah, that will be a major improvement regardless. I'd go for the refurb and spend the extra $$$ to buy a great monitor.

There are a lot of companies (Lacie for an example) out there trying to play to the professional photographic monitor market using a lot of fancy terms and focusing on particular specs ("LED lit for the best color gamut ever") but I have yet to see anything that comes anywhere close to Eizo. Bare in mind that a proper, color accurate monitor meant for soft proofing prints will often appear dull, dark, and lacking contrast compared to an Apple or other consumer-oriented monitor. What you're looking for is:
- How accurate is the calibration? (easiest way to illustrate is to put two identical monitors side by side)
- Is the calibration affecting the monitors response (best) or the video card's output (normal)?
- After an accurate calibration how long does the calibration remain reasonably accurate
- What level of detail can be seen in the shadows?
- How long is the warranty?
- Does the warranty cover replacing/repairing the monitor if it starts to lose the ability to calibrate (ask Apple to replace your ACD after 2 years because it won't calibrate any more.
- Does the monitor cover your working gamut?
- When you draw a smooth long gradient in 16bit (an example would be a sky) does the monitor show stepping patterns where you know that the data has no stepping patterns?

Note that it DOES matter if the monitor covers your working gamut even if your printer has a much smaller gamut. If an area is out of gamut you won't see detail in areas where the actually is detail and as a result will not process your images in such a way as to maintain detail in those areas.

So far the only monitor I've tested that passed those questions was an Eizo ColorGraphic monitor. They are significantly more expensive than an Apple monitor, but if you're on a budget you can get a large Apple monitor for "show and tell" (bright, contrasty, and terrible for soft-proofing) and a small Eizo monitor for your color critical workflow and soft-proofing.

Doug Peterson, Head of Technical Services
Capture Integration, Phase One & Canon Dealer | Personal Portfolio
 
LizaWitz

LizaWitz

New member
Apple's doing a lot of work under the hood to make OS X better for programming to multiple cores, including the cores in the GPU. I think a lot of this will be seeing the light of day in Snow Leopard, so maybe Adobe is waiting for that to do a serious rewrite.
 
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LJL

New member
Liza,
That wish sounds familiar to what Adobe said about their delays for PS when Leopard was released :-( Not holding my breath on Adobe getting its act into any faster gear. The Snow Leopard stuff could be the "quiet revolution" in the OS that will pay big dividends to developers that have or are addressing multi-core, multi-thread, and leveraging GPU capacities. Hoping the fog lifts from Adobe soon ;-)

LJ
 
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