Is Apple Quad Core Necessary

[Wayne Fox]

I am just a little surprised as I understand this as you will write and read from your scratch disk and data disk simmutanously and will therefore get a performance penalty that is not uptimal.
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Doesn't photshops scratch disk work much like virtual memory, and Photoshop has to read the entire file into RAM/scratch disk when you open it.  Seems like if you have enough ram, the entire file should get sucked in, then if necessary the scratch disk goes to work.  But once the files loaded, it isn't accessed anymore until you save it, so not that much opportunity for conflict.  

Jeff's setup, if I understand it right, sounds terrific.  Basically he's making sure that both types of virtual memory (the OS VM and photoshop Scratch disk) can't conflict, so no disk grinding as they compete.  Nice idea.

This may be comparable to pixel peeping with this high end of a setup ... 7200 RPM drives running in quad processor 16gig machines ... it's fast.

However, that's using photoshop.  Lightroom, which is far more disk intensive is another story, and may be worth some extra effort to maximize hard drive efficiency.  Any thoughts on that out there?

[Mark Lindquist]

My studio has both the Dual Dual (9gigs Ram) and the Quad Quad (9 Gigs Ram) each 3Ghz.
The 2xQuad has the nvidia 4500 graphics card in it.

I can say, without reservation, there is little difference when using Photoshop.  The Quad Quad is great for video work etc., but really, the Dual Dual with 8 gigs is about tops for CS3.

Is the 3 ghz better than the 2.66?  Probably not that much, eh?

As for scratch disks?  A clean 300 Gig drive.

BTW we use Cal-digit SATA host adapters and Burly eSATA enclosures - the 1TB Hitachi's.
NOT Raid, rather scheduled backups.

M

[The View]

My studio has both the Dual Dual (9gigs Ram) and the Quad Quad (9 Gigs Ram) each 3Ghz.
The 2xQuad has the nvidia 4500 graphics card in it.

I can say, without reservation, there is little difference when using Photoshop.  The Quad Quad is great for video work etc., but really, the Dual Dual with 8 gigs is about tops for CS3.

Is the 3 ghz better than the 2.66?  Probably not that much, eh?

As for scratch disks?  A clean 300 Gig drive.

BTW we use Cal-digit SATA host adapters and Burly eSATA enclosures - the 1TB Hitachi's.
NOT Raid, rather scheduled backups.

M
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If you work on an iMac, you only have one hard drive.

(I already ordered 3GB of RAM to max out the 24" white iMac)

So, is it better to reserve a portion of the main drive as a scratch disc, or use an external hard drive? And would firewire 800 be fast enough, or would you recommend connecting with SATA or SATA II (via an adapter).

[tived]

Doesn't photshops scratch disk work much like virtual memory, and Photoshop has to read the entire file into RAM/scratch disk when you open it.  Seems like if you have enough ram, the entire file should get sucked in, then if necessary the scratch disk goes to work.  But once the files loaded, it isn't accessed anymore until you save it, so not that much opportunity for conflict. 

Jeff's setup, if I understand it right, sounds terrific.  Basically he's making sure that both types of virtual memory (the OS VM and photoshop Scratch disk) can't conflict, so no disk grinding as they compete.  Nice idea.

This may be comparable to pixel peeping with this high end of a setup ... 7200 RPM drives running in quad processor 16gig machines ... it's fast.

However, that's using photoshop.  Lightroom, which is far more disk intensive is another story, and may be worth some extra effort to maximize hard drive efficiency.  Any thoughts on that out there?
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Hi Wayne,

What Jeff is doing sounds great, and if it does not conflict, then we can save on more expensive harddrives. So I am all for it, but my experience tells me otherwise. but few here knows photoshop as he does. So, if it works for him, it will work for the rest of us.

Henrik

[Kevin W Smith]

Best value is clearly the dual dualcore 2.66, not the 3. The premium for the extra 12% CPU speed is excessive. Better to spend the money on memory.

Best memory value is to buy the machine with the minimum Apple memory (2 x 512 MB). When you get the machine, remove the Apple memory and install 4 x 2 GB modules. No point going beyond 8 GB for your planned use. Keep the Apple memory, don't sell it. If you ever have a hardware problem, Apple service will tell you it is your non-Apple memory. Put the Apple memory back in before you take the machine in for service.

For photoshop scratch space, partition one of your drives (not the boot drive) and reserve the FIRST partition (it is important that it is the first partition) as the photoshop scratch partition. 50 GB should be lots of space for photoshop. This is much cheaper than buying an expensive and noisy 10,000 rpm Raptor drive for photoshop but gives good performance since you are using the fastest part of the drive.
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My thoughts exactly on your first two paragraphs. I'm a PC user and priced out the cost to build my own dual Xeon 2.66Ghz system with the same specs and couldn't come close to Apple's price. Neither can Dell or HP, the base model MacPro is a steal and blazing fast too.

That thing has server-grade components and registered memory, making it a more stable machine than one that's built from the Core 2 Duo processers used in the iMac with, uh, less than server-grade components. A friend of mine just bought one to run Windows XP for the same reason - Apple either worked out a special deal with Intel, or they're losing money on the base model for sure. The $800 price jump to the 3GHz tells the story, the price difference of the CPU's is only about $300 and the machine is otherwise identical.

I disagree on using a partition for the scratch drive though, a separate physical drive is always best. You can get a 74GB SATA Western Digital 10,000 RPM drive for $150 at newegg.com. A little noisy but they're not too bad, IMO. Fast little phuckers though!

As for Airport, wireless is okay for Internet stuff, but if you're connecting multiple machines together you're much better off using wired Ethernet with a router or switch, it'll run faster for file transfers. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of the Airport transmitter anyway. The Apple software is easy to use because it hides the geekery of figuring out your own hexadecimal WEP key and replaces it with simple password translator, but the range isn't great, and it only has single port for wired Ethernet but no switch or router. I prefer the classic Linksys WRT54G. You manage it through a web browser so it's fully cross platform. It's also compatible with Airport receivers, but you have to use a hex password on the client machines, instead of your dog's name or whatever.

[The View]

You can get a 74GB SATA Western Digital 10,000 RPM drive for $150 at newegg.com. A little noisy but they're not too bad, IMO. Fast little phuckers though!

How about a soundproofed enclosure? Newegg offers some.

I would just hate to have the constant whine of a high RPM in my ears.

[Paul Sumi]

My thoughts exactly on your first two paragraphs. I'm a PC user and priced out the cost to build my own dual Xeon 2.66Ghz system with the same specs and couldn't come close to Apple's price. Neither can Dell or HP, the base model MacPro is a steal and blazing fast too.

That thing has server-grade components and registered memory, making it a more stable machine than one that's built from the Core 2 Duo processers used in the iMac with, uh, less than server-grade components. A friend of mine just bought one to run Windows XP for the same reason - Apple either worked out a special deal with Intel, or they're losing money on the base model for sure.
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Kevin,

I'm also a PC user who has gone through the same thought process as you.

How does your friend like running XP on the Mac Pro?  I've been considering doing the same thing on a dual boot basis with OS X (I also have a G4 Powerbook for my portable).

I have too many apps which are Windows-only and Parallels doesn't yet support all my hardware.  So I can't go Apple as my primary OS.  But this might give me interesting options for the future.

Thanks,

Paul

[Kevin W Smith]

Kevin,

I'm also a PC user who has gone through the same thought process as you.

How does your friend like running XP on the Mac Pro?  I've been considering doing the same thing on a dual boot basis with OS X (I also have a G4 Powerbook for my portable).

I have too many apps which are Windows-only and Parallels doesn't yet support all my hardware.  So I can't go Apple as my primary OS.  But this might give me interesting options for the future.

Thanks,

Paul
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Ya, I'm in the same boat. So far so good with my friend, he says the main problem is the Apple keyboard. He's tried a couple others but hasn't found one that works 100%, and it blue screens every week or so.

Then again he's also running boot camp, which is perfectly sensible. I made the bold suggestion to just re-format the whole drive with NTFS and do a clean install with XP Pro, but he wants to be dual-boot, which is definitely understandable.

And ya, Parallels is cool but doesn't work with everything yet, especially peripherals. Kudos to Apple for supporting it, but it's not quite ready for prime time. It will be soon I think, just not quite yet. Intel made it possible, but it's really new technology.

FWIW, now that Apple's hardware is finally on par I'd really like to make the switch since my desktop PC is fairly ancient, and beyond upgrading more than I already have. But NONE of my apps offer a cross-grade option, so it would cost me thousands in software alone to go full-on OSX everything, nevermind the time it would take to make it all work.

That's time and money I need to spend on marketing and creating new images, not a software -and- hardware switchover. I use Mac's almost every day for other things  and I like them a lot, but it's a money and time hurdle more than a technical one right now. Oh well.

[budjames]

I had to give up my Mac 15 years ago for business integration reasons. My last Mac was a Color Duo laptop.

In January, I retired a Dell Precision dual Xeon workstation and laptop. I replaced them with a Mac Book Pro 15" w/3GB RAM and added a Mac Pro 8-core w/12GB RAM and 3TB of RAM (2 x 750GB in RAID 0 and 2 x 750GB drives).

Lightroom, Photoshop CS3 and all other apps like iTunes run so much better on my Macs. However, for my investment management business, I still need Internet Explorer for certain secured web sites and I use ACT! (Windows only) for contact management. To run WindowsXP Pro and these apps on my laptop I use Parallels 3.0. It runs better than my Dells.

The ability to run all of your Windows apps makes the decision to switch a no brainer. Once you do, your computing experiences will be much happier.

Cheers.

Bud James
North Wales, PA