The GetDPI Photography Forum

Great to see you here. Join our insightful photographic forum today and start tapping into a huge wealth of photographic knowledge. Completing our simple registration process will allow you to gain access to exclusive content, add your own topics and posts, share your work and connect with other members through your own private inbox! And don’t forget to say hi!

Mac Pro

Dustbak

Member
On the fence here. my current Macpro is a dual processor 6-core (eg. 12cores at 3.0ghz) with 64gb and an internal raid5 made of SSD's as well as a RAID0 made of 4 drives. I am wondering how much performance I would gain and how I get the 7 drive SSD working RAID plus the 4 drive RAID0 into 1 single box like I have now...

I would settle for another box next to the Macpro too but the SSD's plus the normal drives makes for 11drives in total...

Another downside is that my current 'workraid' has appr. 1.6gb/s write speed and appr. 1.3gb/s read speed. It will be very hard to pull that off with an external TB casing.
 
Last edited:

tcdeveau

Well-known member
Pricing is pretty reasonable, even better with educational pricing (I'm a student). Shipping already slipped to Feb for build to order configs. RAM for it is cheaper through OWC and Crucial but not by much (it may drop by Feb). I'll miss the single box but I won't miss the noise and heat generated by my old mac pro. That thing sounded like a freight train and doubled as a space heater. I'm personally torn between pulling the trigger or saving up for a new back.
 

tcdeveau

Well-known member
Oh, and regarding external TB RAIDs, the Promise Pegasus 2 R8 advertises 1450 Mb/s (at least on Apple's site). IDK if that's read or write though. It's also an extra $4600. Hopefully more TB 2 peripherals pop up soon.
 

k-hawinkler

Well-known member
Well, a fully loaded system with a large Pegasus and 4K display will be more than $15K USD it looks like.
 

JeRuFo

Active member
Any reviews out there on the functionality of the Sharp 4K monitor for digital photography post-processing?
Thanks.
I saw a dutch review that says it can display 92% of sRGB and 74% of adobe RGB. Color and luminance uniformity was described as adequate. Not totally even, but pretty good.

On the whole it doesn't sound too good if I'm honest. The increase in resolution is definetely nice, but for serious color work I'd hold out until more players adopt this technology.
 

RVB

Member
I saw a dutch review that says it can display 92% of sRGB and 74% of adobe RGB. Color and luminance uniformity was described as adequate. Not totally even, but pretty good.

On the whole it doesn't sound too good if I'm honest. The increase in resolution is definetely nice, but for serious color work I'd hold out until more players adopt this technology.
I would skip this and hold out for Eizo or NEC.
 

robertwright

New member
any idea when owc will offer PCIe ssd internal storage options? all they have now is for the macbook air.

how you can sell a tower with only 256gb as a boot drive makes no sense to me.
 

jduncan

Active member
Oh, and regarding external TB RAIDs, the Promise Pegasus 2 R8 advertises 1450 Mb/s (at least on Apple's site). IDK if that's read or write though. It's also an extra $4600. Hopefully more TB 2 peripherals pop up soon.

I will not recommend the 32TB version, but the 24TB version if needed. This are my reasons:

1. It's build with slower 5900RPM disks.
2. With 4TB per disk rebuild time will grow a lot. During that time a new drive could fail. Even if we configure with RAID 6 that could be an issue.
3. Daisy chain: We can expand later.

This considerations may not apply to you, but maybe they can be useful to someone else.

For photography I believe 14 (RAID 5) or 12TB (RAID 6) is plenty to start with and that level is reach by using 2TB disks with faster rebuild time.
For video there never enough space but I believe that 21TB will handle projects.

Best regards,
J. Duncan
 

Qamaro

Member
I'm in the 32TB (4TB x 8) camp the performance difference between the drives for photography and video work is negligible in RAID-6 configuration. As J also pointed out for video you can't have to much storage.

In terms of rebuild times I tend to set the enclosures to prioritize the rebuild process vs trying to use the volume during the rebuild. Even if it takes 24 - 72 hours for the rebuild to occur at least the RAID is back and healthy.

Both the Promise TB2 and Areca TB1 (TB2 version coming 1Q14) are great units, with the Areca coming empty which allows you to size accordingly. You can also purchase different lots of drives and differ the sources (i.e. to reduce the chance of multiple "same day" drive failures). For those that want to see the Promise performance see Beaker7's stats from his R8 TB2 - 24TB unit (not sure which RAID config he's using though):

First 20Gbps Thunderbolt 2 RAID Arrays Now Shipping Ahead of Mac Pro Release - Page 5 - MacRumors Forums
 

bradhusick

Active member
Since we print at 300dpi or 240dpi wouldn't it be great to have a monitor that offered this pixel density? The Dell offers 185ppi so that's not bad.
 
4K displays are way overpriced at the moment, one could instead buy the 27" Eizo CG276 for $2600 and have the ideal display. Eizo would probably make a better 4K monitor anyway, so I'd wait to see what they have up their sleeve first.

Since we print at 300dpi or 240dpi wouldn't it be great to have a monitor that offered this pixel density? The Dell offers 185ppi so that's not bad.
300ppi is 7000x3000 and even 240ppi is around 5700x3200 (for a 27" monitor), this is the same is if your video card were running at least six 1920x1080 monitors at the same time. Anything requiring hardware acceleration would likely be running like a slideshow unless you had a computer with multiple video cards.

Of course, current 4K displays already use a work-around in order to display images, since the scaling chip in the display itself can't show resolutions that big, so the image is split in half and the left/right sides of the screen have their own inputs. When you use Displayport, you can use a single cable and the monitor will split the signal on it's own, but you need two HDMI cables otherwise.

Regarding the Mac Pro... I think it's a "hidden deal" in the same way that the iMac was, which gave you a 27" 2560x1440 S-IPS monitor as part of the purchase price, for less than a similar PC with monitor. It uses pro-level graphics cards that normally cost $3000 each on their own, like the D700, which is actually the Firepro W9000. So what they are selling is two of those in a $6,600 computer, if you also max out the HDD and RAM options. Pro cards are overpriced for what amounts to a firmware difference, but it's nice to have something with all the features already unlocked without having to flash the card's memory or use driver hacks, and have it be supported as well.
 
Top