Specs for a new Mac Pro

[Mitchell]

I'm looking to replace my Mac G5 with a 8 Core Nehalem Mac Pro.

I shoot MF and 35mm digital. I use LightRoom 90% of the time with a bit of Raw Developer, and PS3. I don't do a lot of other things like iTunes, etc. I do read the news on the web.

I'm figuring on getting 16 GB of memory from OWC because as diglloyd says it's fairly cheap.

2x 1TB Hitachi hard Drives for files in addition the the standard one from Apple for System and Aplications.
I don't plan to do any RAID except possibly a Drobo for backup. ( I'm too old for striped scratch discs, etc. Out of my league mentally. )

Does this makes sense?

Should I get the ATI RADEON HD 4870 for an extra $200 or stick with the NVIDIA GeFore GT 120?
Incidentally, the ATI card is slightly cheaper from the Apple Store than OWC. (I'm sure because they are replacing the NVIDIA.)

I want this system to be simple and last a long time. I'm not very tech savvy.

Thanks for any help.

Best,

Mitchell

 

[Jack]

Hi Mitchell,

If you are not going to be gaming, doing heavy 3-D animation, or much high-res video, I think the basic card will serve you very well.

Cheers,

 

[dougpeterson]

Nothing like a little Ghost Recon to relax between editing sessions though.

 

[Mitchell]

Thanks Jack,

And the other choices 16GB mem and 8 Core seem reasonable to you?

I marvel at you guys who are good at high tech.

Doug,

I play darts with the artist in the next studio. Away from the computer!

 

[Jack]

Thanks Jack,

And the other choices 16GB mem and 8 Core seem reasonable to you?

Frankly, I would do 4x2G of the OWC RAM to start -- combined with 4 of the stock Apple 1G sticks, this gives you 12G RAM total, which is an excellent starting point. Then once the OWC 4G sticks drop to reasonable -- probably only a few months from now -- I would add 4 of them to replace the Apple 1G's for a final total of 24G ram. One thing about the Mac is it does like and utilize RAM... I also think 24 is a good price/performance balance over 32G as there is not currently much performance difference between 24 and 32.

That will likely change with Snow Leopard and CS5 however, as both are likely to better utilize even more RAM, and IMO that will be the time to consider moving up to 32 or going even higher as I expect we'll see 8G sticks dropping to the realm of affordability...

PS: FWIW setting up a RAID-0 on the MacPro is really easy. But unfortunately it seems Hitachi and Samsung drives are more problematic in RAID than Seagate or WD. I would personally recommend WD 1TB Caviar Blacks over the Hitachi for that reason, and I'd get three of them to fill up the remaining bays. If you order the 1TB OS drive from Apple, it will likely be a WD Black -- at leas the one my friend just ordered was.

My .02,

 

[Mitchell]

Jack,

Thanks so much. Your .02 is worth more than my dollars and saves them too.

Maybe I'll get 2 Caviar Blacks from OWC, and see how fast it is. If it's too slow can I buy another Caviar and set up RAID-0 later?

You can never underestimate my tech savvy.

Best,

Mitchell

 

[hcubell]

PS: FWIW setting up a RAID-0 on the MacPro is really easy. But unfortunately it seems Hitachi and Samsung drives are more problematic in RAID than Seagate or WD. I would personally recommend WD 1TB Caviar Blacks over the Hitachi for that reason, and I'd get three of them to fill up the remaining bays. If you order the 1TB OS drive from Apple, it will likely be a WD Black -- at leas the one my friend just ordered was.

My .02,

Jack:
Do you happen to know approximately how much of an improvement in performance you would get with a Mac Pro by running two separate high speed drives as the scratch disk for Photoshop rather than a single separate high speed drive? Also, what type of hardware or software would you need to run the pair together?
Thanks, Howard

 

[popum]

If I can jump in on this, I'm looking at MacPro as well. My question is which of the three processor speeds is the best value?

Thanks for the help

Mike

 

[carstenw]

Interestingly, the 4-core Mac Pro is actually faster on some benchmarks. If you don't need the 8-core speed with properly multi-threaded apps, or your apps aren't properly multi-threaded, then the 4-core Mac Pro is by far the best bet.

However, some apps can use the processors, and the 8-core Macs also have more room for RAM, so if your needs require lots of RAM, then you might want to spring for the larger Macs.

The fastest Macs are never good value, but if you need the absolute fastest computer you can get, then it is there.

 

[Jack]

Maybe I'll get 2 Caviar Blacks from OWC, and see how fast it is. If it's too slow can I buy another Caviar and set up RAID-0 later?

Yes and yes, and you can even RAID-0 the first two drives initially for improved performance.

HOWEVER, manufacturers do change drive firmware periodically and that can affect performance characteristics that may cause problems in a RAID environment -- thus I recommend purchasing all of the drives you want for a RAID environment at the same time.

 

[Jack]

Jack:
Do you happen to know approximately how much of an improvement in performance you would get with a Mac Pro by running two separate high speed drives as the scratch disk for Photoshop rather than a single separate high speed drive? Also, what type of hardware or software would you need to run the pair together?
Thanks, Howard

Hi Howard:

I ran the benchmark when I did it and here is what I got - note that my benchmark is a CS action using common photo-related tools that will force scratch on any machine, so is designed to test CS4 performance in a real-world situation:

Using a single, fast disk, fastest outer rim partition dedicated to CS4 scratch, my benchmark ran in 1:04. Moving the scratch to a two-drive RAID-0 (or stripe, again on an outer rim partition), the same benchmark dropped to 42 seconds. Then moving to a 4-drive RAID-0 (still using a fast outer rim partition) the time dropped to 29 seconds.

All the software required to do this is in the Leopard operating system, so there is nothing else to buy other than a set of matching drives

Cheers,

 

[Jack]

Carsten:

I think it's a good bet future operating systems (read Snow Leopard) and future software (read CS5) will utilize multiple cores very effectively, and thus my reco is to get the 8-core machine.

~~~

Mike,

As for which 8-core machine to buy, I would say that's dependent on your wallet. Speeds will increase in essentially a direct proportion to processor speed, so a 2.66 is going to be roughly 15% faster than the 2.26, and the 2.93 about 10% faster than the 2.66... Note that the slower processors supposedly use a bit less power, so are maybe a little greener.

Cheers,

 

[hcubell]

Hi Howard:

I ran the benchmark when I did it and here is what I got - note that my benchmark is a CS action using common photo-related tools that will force scratch on any machine, so is designed to test CS4 performance in a real-world situation:

Using a single, fast disk, fastest outer rim partition dedicated to CS4 scratch, my benchmark ran in 1:04. Moving the scratch to a two-drive RAID-0 (or stripe, again on an outer rim partition), the same benchmark dropped to 42 seconds. Then moving to a 4-drive RAID-0 (still using a fast outer rim partition) the time dropped to 29 seconds.

All the software required to do this is in the Leopard operating system, so there is nothing else to buy other than a set of matching drives

Cheers,

Thanks, Jack. That's an impressive performance enhancement. I have one of the early 2006 Mac Pros. I think it only has 4 bays for hard drives, so I can only run a four drive RAID-0 setup if I use a partition on my startup disk for scratch. I though it was best not to use the startup disk at all as a scratch disk. Am I wrong? (You can tell I am clueless about RAID, so I appreciate the help.)

 

[John Black]

Regarding the video card decision, this may help - Ars Technia 2.66 Nehalam Review.

 

[Jack]

Thanks, Jack. That's an impressive performance enhancement. I have one of the early 2006 Mac Pros. I think it only has 4 bays for hard drives, so I can only run a four drive RAID-0 setup if I use a partition on my startup disk for scratch. I though it was best not to use the startup disk at all as a scratch disk. Am I wrong? (You can tell I am clueless about RAID, so I appreciate the help.)

Well first off, there are two spare SATA ports on your motherboard where you can hook up two more drives. And even neater is this little rack which lets you mount two SATA drives in place of a lower optical drive! http://www.maxupgrades.com/istore/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&Product_ID=158

Of course this assumes you are not using the lower optical for a second optical drive. Note it will also allow you to mount 4 SATA drives, two below and two above, but then you need to add a SATA controller card and eliminate you upper optical drive. I use this rack and have a total of 6 drives in my box; the main 4 are in RAID-0 with two partitions, the thin outer for scratch and the huge inner for really fast image storage. Then the 2 drives in the lower optical bay are also striped and that's where my OS and programs reside -- this pair isn't partitioned and gives me a huge, fast desktop.

Cheers,

 

[Guy Mancuso]

By the time Jack gets you setup I have a extra pair of wings to stick to the side of the box for takeoff. It will fly trust me. LOL

 

[Jack]

...

Little Deuce Coupe...


,

 

[tashley]

A minority report: I haven't looked it up but I have the distinct feeling that on my 8 core Xeon with 8 gig of RAM, neither Capture One nor Lightroom are that much better than my 18 month old iMac and I suspect that the apps are not correctly using the multithreading possibilities. In fact C1's tethered mode actively crashed on the 8 core and worked fine on everything else until the latest version of the software. So I'd check out the exact specs of the apps you use. There's no point trying to drive a ferrari on a cart track.

t

 

[Guy Mancuso]

C1 is more core dependent and LR is a single core just like PS is . Cores will not help you much with LR but Ram will. I just bought a 15 in MBP 2.93 with 2 SSD drives running Raid 0 and 8gbs of Ram and in PS it will actually beat my old MacPro 2.66 with 12gb of Ram and 10k drives. BUT in C1 the MacPro because of the 4 cores beats my laptop . I just got through A LOT of testing on this. On C1 you need to update to 4.7 since they have a fix in there for the 8 core boxes, there was a issue. Doug or Jack can explain this a little better. But you need to update to 4.7. BTW even though C1 is somewhat core dependent it is also Processor and ram dependent. No single thing in testing made it any better with times unless other parts of the system also improved along with Ram, Processor and fast Hard Drives. C1 is a combination of all of the above. I'm pretty close to my old MacPro but Jacks box just smokes me with the more cores , ram and drives. His time with 10 P45 plus files is 1:22 mine on the laptop is 3:40 in processing times , My old Mac Pro was 2:45 and my old laptop was 4:55 so I wound up about in the middle of my two older boxes but actually ahead in PS because it uses a single core. Cores maybe the biggest element but Ram and hard drives are also part of those times as well.

 

[Jack]

Hmmm. My Mac is an early 2008 8-core machine, and the last two C1's have been very stable on it. Currently, 4.7 is showing about a 20% increase in speed over 4.6. For a benchmark Tim, I process out 10 P45+ files to full 16-bit Profoto tiffs and time it, it takes 1:22 for the run with 4.7.

As to Mac stability issues, the earlier versions of 4 did have issues with 8-core Macs. The fix was completely removing all C1 files from your machine and reloading -- and you have to go into the system and manually remove some of these -- did you try that before installing 4.7?