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Author Topic: New MacPro vs old. Which one now.  (Read 4132 times)

Benny Profane

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New MacPro vs old. Which one now.
« on: September 29, 2014, 11:33:09 am »

Thought I would bite the bullet for one of the new trashcan MacPros, which in the configuration I need is about five grand or so. Then I start looking at older MacPro towers on Craigs and E-Bay with plenty of ram and disc space, and the price difference is considerable (like, a nice round figure, about 1000). That's a big difference. How soon does the collective think that the old towers will be unusable when the processors can no longer handle whatever Photoshop is down the line? That's all I really want to do, btw, run Photoshop and Lightroom, and a printer off to the side. I don't need all the power to run video or any other complex graphics that the new trashcan does better, and speed benchmarks have gotten a little silly these days - I can wait a few seconds for files to open or other common functions to complete on the older units. What's the rush, after all?
Even at a thousand, if I can get three to five years out of the machine, that will still be a considerable savings over that time. Then I re-assess and buy whatever Cupertino has come up with then, right? I just don't want to get stuck with a machine that is effectively unusable, like my old G5 that faded away a few years ago.
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kers

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Re: New MacPro vs old. Which one now.
« Reply #1 on: September 29, 2014, 01:07:05 pm »

If you buy a new macpro( trashcan) then you are entering a new ecosystem with dvd- harddisks etc connected trough thunderbolt...
It will cost you a lot and you get  a 1.5 -2x faster machine that can do 4k video, and can connect a 4k screen.
If you buy a second hand macpro 5.1 ( i would choose for photoshop the macpro 5.1  6 core 3.3 hz for with 16-32gig ram) you save a lot of money and the machine will be usefull till Apple drops support...
It wiil be fast enough for layered 36 mp images for sure.
Also intel just released new xeons etc so i would wait for the new mac pro, 4k? Imac and  macmini...
« Last Edit: September 29, 2014, 01:08:39 pm by kers »
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Pieter Kers
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Benny Profane

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Re: New MacPro vs old. Which one now.
« Reply #2 on: September 29, 2014, 01:24:56 pm »

If you buy a new macpro( trashcan) then you are entering a new ecosystem with dvd- harddisks etc connected trough thunderbolt...
It will cost you a lot and you get  a 1.5 -2x faster machine that can do 4k video, and can connect a 4k screen.
If you buy a second hand macpro 5.1 ( i would choose for photoshop the macpro 5.1  6 core 3.3 hz for with 16-32gig ram) you save a lot of money and the machine will be usefull till Apple drops support...
It wiil be fast enough for layered 36 mp images for sure.
Also intel just released new xeons etc so i would wait for the new mac pro, 4k? Imac and  macmini...


Well, no video, and nobody needs 4k screens, especially if you're printing to paper.

As far as the new chips, well old story, right? Time marches on, so I fully expect anything I buy today to be obsolete in five to ten years. Nature of the beast.  But, if that's the case, I want to minimize my outlay now, because I want to be throwing away a 1000 dollar computer, not a 5000 dollar computer, when I have to. I think the new trashcan is overkill for exclusively photo processing, anyway.

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Jim Pascoe

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Re: New MacPro vs old. Which one now.
« Reply #3 on: September 29, 2014, 02:12:13 pm »

My Mac Pro tower is about three years old and I think it will be a few years before it is incapable of running LR and PS.  I do a lot of video editing on it too and if it can handle that with ease it is some way from being obsolete.  Its a mid 2010 2.8 Quad core with 16GB of RAM.

Jim
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ahinesdesign

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New MacPro vs old. Which one now.
« Reply #4 on: September 29, 2014, 05:53:13 pm »

I have a 12-core and a quad-core Mac Pro at work.  The 12-core (bought a few months before the black cylinder was released) is used primarily for video (Final Cut Pro and After Effects) but some Photoshop.  Its a smoking fast machine, but even high bit rate 1080 can bog it down, depending on the app being used.  The increased performance is seen in rendering and transcoding, not normal actions.  

The quad-core is old enough that it doesn't support 64-bit OSX, but it functions just fine and its lesser speed is generally not noticed that often.

If you aren't editing high bit rate video and don't feel the need to have the latest and greatest, an older Mac Pro will be plenty of power.
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mitchino

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Re: New MacPro vs old. Which one now.
« Reply #5 on: October 01, 2014, 04:21:30 am »

I just went through this process, did a lot of research - and bought a Mac Pro 5.1 12 Core 2.93GHz with 64GB RAM for £2000 here in the UK. I then installed an OWC Accelsior as a start up disk. The machine is smokin'. At some point I'll upgrade the graphics card too. The only thing I wish I could have is Thunderbolt, but I have that on my iMac so it's no biggie. The trash cans for me are just too expensive at the moment, and most software doesn't make the best use of their hardware. If you don't edit video, I see little advantage in them.
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JeanMichel

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Re: New MacPro vs old. Which one now.
« Reply #6 on: October 01, 2014, 07:41:35 am »

Interesting question as I have to also move to a new machine sometime soon. My MacPro is the 1.1, dual core Xeon. Works fine, thank you very much, with CS6 and LR4. As long as there is not a faster computer next to it for comparison, it is fast enough. My 30" Cinema Display  is also still fine. But I cannot upgrade to LR5, etc. with it. My choice is pretty much between the new MacPro or a 'fully-loaded' 27" iMac. The iMac would be more powerful than my existing macPro and come with its own screen. I would have to get hard drive enclosures for my current internal drives, or I guess, keep my MacPro and connect that to the new iMac. I do not do any video at this time and I read (from Jeff Schewe's comments) that LR would slow down quite a lot when using a 4K screen as it has to draw that much more real estate. I am not enamoured with the idea of upgrading to a used MacPro, so I am leaning hard toward an iMac but wonder how long I can keep that running -- I keep my equipment for a long time -- I run my accounting on a 486 with DOS 3.1!
Jean-Michel
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