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New Mac Pro

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
I think Seagate had a bad run for a while, but things seem to have improved. Hard to say, I know folks who swear by WD's and others that swear at them... I've always liked Hitachi drives.

Update on the 1TB WD Green drives: I am currently copying all the files from one of these drives to a new one, one internal and the second connected via eSATA to an external box. First off, the sustained read/write transfer rates are hovering around 60 MB/s, which isn't too shabby. However, the really interesting thing is the entire process is dead silent --- no noises whatsoever. Lastly, the external non-cooled box is maybe three or four degrees warmer than room temp, and fans running on slow in the MacPro.
 

cam

Active member
Tom's Hardware has the new Samsung F1 1TB drive as the new performance leader. 118MB/sec throughput.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/11/21/samsung_overtakes_with_a_bang/page11.html
Lars -- just to let you know that it was a Samsung (albeit 500GB) that was in the LaCie that failed me after two weeks of use. it worked like a dream for those two weeks and then failed in an instant -- no warning whatsoever.... performance was wonderful, but i'd rather have security!
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Well I went all Seagate .11 bought a 500 for my OS and ordered 2 1tb last night one for my LR catalog and raw files and the other I will do something with . Taking Time Machine to a external to start but my externals are noisy. Have to figure out what i am going to do there
 

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
Just wanted to supply an update with some corrections. First, it appears CS3 uses all processors, though it divides the load across them all evenly, so they aren't actually being stressed very much even during heavy lifting. I set up a benchmark test, taking a 1MB tiff up to 1Gig in size, rotating it 90 degrees, then applying USM, then downsizing a bit so you can see it display and know when to stop your timing.

On my machine as currently configured with no real scratch drive, it took 45 seconds. On a friend's Mac Pro quad 3.0, with 16G memory and a striped pair for scratch (really fast I/O), he got 40 seconds. So bottom line is CS3 still isn't using system memory OR processors efficiently and forces you to scratch once you exceed its 3G RAM max. Will update again as soon as my other Seagate 3200.11 for scratch arrives next week --- I suspect I'll knock a few seconds off but NOT match my friend's striped scratch...



FWIW,
 

etrigan63

Active member
Well I went all Seagate .11 bought a 500 for my OS and ordered 2 1tb last night one for my LR catalog and raw files and the other I will do something with . Taking Time Machine to a external to start but my externals are noisy. Have to figure out what i am going to do there
Why don't you order a Time Capsule and stow it in some other corner of your office?
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Carlos I may just do that. What I am trying to do is get everything inside the box because the noise is much better and it is cooled better so my plan was to take time machine to a external and get my final files inside that way i could switch the 1tb external to a Time machine bocx and can turn it off very easily if I want or get a time capsule and go that route which wouldbe nice to back the family up wireless. That maybe a nice option but first i want to get everything back inside my box that I access fast enough. I been doing a trick lately is when I power up the 3 externals come on and than I just trash there icons and they power down so there not on, than reboot if I need them. There fans in the My Books are noisy and they kick on pretty quick
 

Stuart Richardson

Active member
I just wanted to add my voice here. I finally upgraded to a Mac Pro. I have been using a Dual 2.0 GhZ G5 for 4.5 years. It was the top of the line at the time and it is remarkable how well it has held up. I had 4gb of ram in there and an upgraded video card and it still did things pretty fast.

But

The new one is just atrociously fast. It is amazing how much they have advanced in that time. I went for the standard model -- the 2.8ghz 8-core with 2gb ram, 320gb drive and the radeon card. I ordered 4gb of 800mHz ram with the heat sinks and everything from Newegg (239, compared to apple which would charge you 1000 bucks), along with 2 western digital 750gb green hard drives. I will use them to back each other up. They were about 150 dollars each, again compared to 400 from apple.
Two things I was particularly impressed with: installing the hard drives and ram was hilariously easy. The design of the case is great. It was good in the G5 tower, but they have made it even better.
The second thing is how quiet it is. I can't even tell it is on! The old G5 was quiet (except in target disk mode, then it sounds like a freaking jet engine), but this one is near silent. It was a pleasant surprise.

Anyway, Newegg sent me the wrong RAM (they sent 667 instead of 800), so I am not experiencing the full beast yet, but already it is amazing. When I installed the 667 RAM and brought it to 6gb, the computer booted up in about 15 seconds. Programs launched nearly instantly and bridge loaded thumbnails of huge scans many multiples faster than the old computer. Anyway, I am very impressed.

The screen I am using is my Eizo CG-210, and you certainly could not ask for a better monitor, so my whole desktop experience has improved dramatically. Time to start printing more portfolio images!
 

LJL

New member
Stuart,
Congrats on the new machine. Sounds like it is hitting the marks for you. I am in the same situation....running a 4.5 year old G5 with dual 2GHz. I upgraded the video card twice and have 6GB of RAM, plus 5 HDs crammed into mine, in addition to a RAID card. Have had the logic board replaced once, but other than that, the G5 has been great. I am very intrigued by the sheer power and speed of the new Mac Pros....even those fitted in a more standard way. I almost pulled the trigger on one late last year, but waited, and see that the new machines are even more impressive.

Looks like I will have to start planning that upgrade again. My G5 is about maxed out, but still runs, and I may just keep it as the printer server and storage machine, while having a blast on a newer faster machine. Folks can argue whatever position they want, but one cannot avoid the obvious....Apple builds some pretty incredible machines, and the G5s/Mac Pros are amazing workhorses.

Which video card did you go with on your new Mac Pro? I am seriously considering the extra cost of that new nVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT card. It is getting some outstanding marks. However, neither of the Radeon card look like they are giving up much either.

LJ
 

Stuart Richardson

Active member
I think the fact that the G5 lasted me 4.5 years with ZERO failures of any kind...even the boot hard drive is original...was the strongest argument for sticking with apple. It is still a great machine and the only reason I upgraded is that I have an educational discount right now and I am going to be moving to Iceland more permanently in the summer, so I wanted to buy the computer in the US and save about 100% of the cost versus buying it in Iceland. They have 25% VAT there, their currency is dramatically stronger than ours and every electronic and camera item there costs about double.

So anyway, I have never had a computer last as long as the G5 and remain so viable, so my attitude about the Mac Pro was the same. Buying one expensive, excellent computer that lasts nearly 5 years is better than buying average ones every year or two...if only because it saves you the headache of migrating everything to a new computer.

As for the video card, I stuck with the stock Radeon. Most of the people I talked to said that unless I was doing 3D modeling or video editing, that anything else would be overkill. I only use one 21 inch monitor, as superb as it is, so I am not exactly stressing the card in that sense. I don't use aperture either, so I think that is one application that stresses it a bit more...I do use lightroom, but I have not had any problems yet. From what I have heard, it is actually the programs, not the computer that can often be the weakest link. Evidently photoshop and the adobe programs do not support using all 8 cores yet, but this is hearsay, so don't quote me on it.
 
W

wparsons

Guest
ReidReviews has an article about Sean's recent acquisition and the analysis he did during the process. Well worth reading.

If we hassle him, he promises to discuss the dos program he is running.
 

etrigan63

Active member
I myself am in preparations for ordering my Mac Pro. I expect by the end of the month for me. I have already ordered an additional 2GB of RAM from OWC and have a 1 TB Seagate 7200.11 ready for Time Machine duties.
 

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
A word on Time Machine...

If you do NOT copy images and only copy the normal OS, applications, email, regular document files and even your LR library, I would guess that a 500G drive will cover most folks for about a year of back-up before stuff started falling off the back end. Mine has been running about a month backing up everything EXCEPT images (I am backing up my LR libraries on it) and I've used up about 80G of disk space on the 500G drive I have dedicated to it. The regular hourly back-ups do not take up much added space unless you've made a lot of changes in your file structure. Obviously, if you add images to the back-up routine, you'll need a large enough drive to store the first set and then enough extra to maintain the changes --- and this will eat up drive space quickly...

My preferred back-up for images is still to have my working image drives fully redundant mirrored onsite and another redundant copy stored offsite. For my historical images, a current onsite copy and one redundant offsite copy are adequate. FWIW, I use Carbon Copy Cloner as my image back-up software. It can be be scheduled to run whenever and CAN make a bootable clone of your OS too! IMO for a $10 freeware it is a bargain.

As I gain confidence with TM, it may become the "onsite" back-up routine of choice for my current working image database, but I doubt I'd ever rely on it completely...
 

LJL

New member
Good point, Jack. Regardless of the advertising and marketing, Time Machine seems like a great tool for "all the other stuff" that needs backing up (emails, documents, calendars, notes, address books, etc.). Image files are just too big and too many for most photographers to use something like Time Machine. In fact, Time Machine seems to have some conflicts with things like Aperture's Vault system and Library, and may not be the best for doing that sort of back-up.

For folks doing a lot of image file work, I still think using a RAID 5 system to work on things is a good way to go, and then back-up the final files separately. If one is looking to save every edit on image files, then they are going to need an awful lot of storage space. The distinction must be made between having on-the-fly back-ups for recovery, which is what RAID 5 will do, versus having histories of things from the past, which is what Time Machine is sort of doing. They overlap, but one should think about what they really want to have constantly backed-up in Time Machine, as well as how to best manage and archive image files. As you point out, if folks use Time Machine as their image file back-up system, stuff will quickly be falling off the back end as the space gets gobbled up. Time Machine is more of a "safety net" back-up system, and not an archival storage system, though it could be used that way for smaller file sets.

LJ
 

TRSmith

Subscriber Member
You guys are killing me with this thread. I've been waiting patiently for my MP to arrive for several weeks now, and was pretty psyched all weekend since today was to have been the day. Unfortunately, a spell of warm temps and rain have turned my uphill driveway into a sheet of ice.

The Fedex guy called at 7:00 a.m. while I was in the shower and left a message saying he wasn't even going to try to get up the hill. If I'd taken the call I could have met him at the street with my ATV and been happily mac pro-ing by now.

So one more stinkin' day. So close!
 

LJL

New member
Get yourself a good night's sleep tonight, as I think you are going to be burning many hours once your Mac Pro finally arrives ;-)

That part about being so close is the most frustrating.....had the same thing happen with a UPS delivery on a Friday....missed him by a few minutes, and had to agonize over the entire weekend until I finally got the new toy.

LJ
 

TRSmith

Subscriber Member
Get yourself a good night's sleep tonight, as I think you are going to be burning many hours once your Mac Pro finally arrives ;-)
No question it's going to be work. Since I'm coming from my old G5 PPC, I plan to reinstall from disc all of the apps on the new Intel Mac Pro. A pretty lengthy process when you factor in all the upgrades, etc. And where the heck did all those other applications come from that are filling my Applications folder? Four years of quietly collecting stuff that I suddenly remember I have! Still, there could be worse problems to have, so no complaining.
 

TRSmith

Subscriber Member
Wow. One day with the Mac Pro. It's a almost a little disconcerting to see apps like Quark, that took forever to open on my G5, jump to life on this machine. And others have said it, but I am stunned by how quiet it is. Oh happy day!
 

LJL

New member
Congrats on the new Mac Pro!! Now YOU are the one killing some of us waiting to get one of these new machines ;-) Just looking at test stats, the Mac Pro looks like it will be a screamer for some time, so your enjoyment today will probably last quite some time, and quiet is good. (My G5 can get to howling with all the drives and cards I am running in it.)

LJ
 
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