Thanks for illustrating my point so well. $180 to connect a $100 drive, Thunderbolts biggest "issue".
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Reco Config for Mac Pro (2013)
- Thread starter RGF
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The authoritative review:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7603/mac-pro-review-late-2013
My takeaway? Don't get too worked up about the GPUs. They won't do much for you for quite awhile. The new Mac Pro is a demonstration machine for FCPX.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7603/mac-pro-review-late-2013
My takeaway? Don't get too worked up about the GPUs. They won't do much for you for quite awhile. The new Mac Pro is a demonstration machine for FCPX.
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I think it's a pretty sweet setup. Reading Anandtech's review gives you the impression that Apple is ahead of the curve by leveraging GPU power to continue increasing computing power as CPU improvement stales out.
... However, it's so early to the game, that unless your main workflow involves editing 4K videon on FCPX, you won't realize its full potential. I think in 6 months we'll see a much more mature market with better software optimization. For most of us who wants one, that will be a wiser time to pull the trigger.
... However, it's so early to the game, that unless your main workflow involves editing 4K videon on FCPX, you won't realize its full potential. I think in 6 months we'll see a much more mature market with better software optimization. For most of us who wants one, that will be a wiser time to pull the trigger.
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privatebydesign said:
Thunderbolt holds lots of promise. Like being able to daisy chain devices. Apple placed a big bet on Thunderbolt - for monitor makes sense. For external HDD, not sure there is any real gain in speed, daisy chaining device together for sure, printers, keyboards/mice, tablets, ... USB 3.0 is sufficient and ubiquitous.
Better config for the Mac would have been a few thunderbolt ports and many (more) USB 3.0 ports.
If only Thunderbolt devices were the same price as USB 3.0 devices ..
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If you read the Anand review section on busses, you'll see that going with two memory sticks instead of 4 is going to have an impact on your memory speed, i.e. 4 sticks of 8GB will perform a bit faster than 2 sticks of 16GB, so unless you're firmly planning to up it to 64GB in the near or medium term future, I'd not go that route.
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RGF said:
It does, but history has demonstrated time and again that given the choice consumers will make a "good enough" decision based more closely on cost than ultimate tech specs. If something is technically "better" but cost $180 to connect a $100 device that used to be, effectively, free to connect, market penetration will be a big challenge.
I have a 17" Mac Pro with an Expresscard 34 expansion port with two SATA connectors, it has Firewire 800, it has two internal drives and ten externals attached to it, the cost was comparatively minimal and for practically any application short of high end gaming and video production it excels. It laughs at 6GB PSB files.
How many people actually need, and want to pay for, six screen graphics capability, when what they really want is cheap and plentiful storage connectivity?
Testers, reviewers, high end animators and video production users will love it; the general public, I just don't see it. One of the beauties of Macs, and especially the Mac Pro, has been the design and aesthetics, and the fact you can put what you need in it and it still maintains that design integrity, not anymore, I can just imagine the users boastful images with boxes and $50 cables spewed all over their workstations, about as un-Apple as you can be.
I haven't seen anything yet to convince me my plan to get an "old" Mac Pro is wrong for a workstation concentrating on photography. Indeed from what I have read so far I am certain my idea is more sound than ever. I don't need Thunderbolt to make an extremely powerful photo computer, in fact thunderbolt offers me no real advantages as current tech is well up to speed, even for 80mp cameras, and the cost penalty makes no sense, also, even modest graphics cards are not taxed running an optimal two monitors.
Thunderbolt MIGHT be the connection of the future (it might not) but at this time it is not the connection of the current, it isn't even six months off prime time, maybe a year, maybe two, but not now.
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RGF said:
What type of photoshop work do you do? The answer to this question will heavily impact your buying decision.
The base mac pro will easily handle a large psd file with 50+ layers and 2GB file sizes. But if you're accessing an image library with tens of thousands of 10MB+ files then you may want to consider getting an external thunderbolt raid array to speed up access times and reliability of your storage. Use the Mac Pro's SSD for applications and current projects you're working on. Leave the rest on a RAID array that's backed up by another external drive.
Unless you're doing a lot of 3D modeling in photoshop or would later require 4k monitors I wouldn't bother upgrading from the base GPU. Photoshop is more CPU and RAM intensive for most tasks. If you can afford it then I'd recommend getting at least 6 cores and 32GB of RAM. This setup would really help when working with multiple 2GB psd files.
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privatebydesign said:
Well, one thing I forgot to mention, if you want...instead of the spinning SATA disk on there, you can connect to a SSD drive which will be lightning fast...daisy chain a few of those together....
I may do that with one as a fast scratch disk for work and rendering...and keep the larger one for storage, etc.
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BoneDoc said:
Well, I know on my macbook pro, late 2011 edition...it is loaded up with 16GB RAM, and I can start to pretty easily slow it down in PS with nested smart objects containing RAW files and doing a lot with them...and really start to bog it down when doing FCPX and Davinci Resolve edits/renders.
I would love to get one of the mac pros. However, I'm gonna have to save my pennies a bit, and also...I rarely jump in on a new platform on version 1.0.
I usually wait till at least the 2nd version to arrive and have the bugs shaken out of it.
;D
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Even more cost, look the throughput is not an issue for current computers, I have a 24GB SSD internal scratch disc for PS to use, it rarely touches it even with a meager 8GB of RAM.
I can daisy chain 54 SSD's via FW800, for free (well the $2 cost of a FW cable). Photo files are not generally large enough to be a serious issue, I regularly work with 4-6GB PSB files (the file naming you get when it is too big for PSD). A current MacBook Pro will do the work on that faster than I can, let alone a Mac Pro.
Unless you are doing huge batch actions, like animations, and can multi-thread those actions, then PS doesn't slow down current computers that much. Video is a completely different subject though.
I can daisy chain 54 SSD's via FW800, for free (well the $2 cost of a FW cable). Photo files are not generally large enough to be a serious issue, I regularly work with 4-6GB PSB files (the file naming you get when it is too big for PSD). A current MacBook Pro will do the work on that faster than I can, let alone a Mac Pro.
Unless you are doing huge batch actions, like animations, and can multi-thread those actions, then PS doesn't slow down current computers that much. Video is a completely different subject though.
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