Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Medium Format / Film / Digital Backs – and Large Sensor Photography => Topic started by: Mitchell Baum on October 03, 2008, 07:38:57 pm
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I'm soon going to buy a MFDB, probably a Hy6 65, or possibly a Artec 54 or 75Lv.
Having spent a little time with my Mac G5 and some 75Lv files I can see an upgrade to Intel Mac Pro would be nice. How much would I need to run smoothly without pause?
I'd be using LightRoom mostly and Photoshop.
Thanks,
Mitchell
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I think any of the current configs in the Mac Pro and MacBook Pro lines would be more than sufficient. Single image editing isn't too bad on most computers, but video is what will really get you. The upgrade for you from a G5 may be hugely noticeable or only minor. It depends on what version of Photoshop you were/will be running, and how old your G5 is. Make sure you get extra RAM (I'd go 4gb minimum), and a faster hard drive (7200 rpm) doesn't hurt either, especially if Photoshop uses up all your memory and is forced to scratch disk it.
That said, I run a 17" MBP (latest version), with 4gb RAM, but I wouldn't call Lightroom "smooth without pause." I think for now, with Lightroom still working out some performance tweaking, when you have 20,000+ RAW files in your library, things are going to tend to slow down no matter what. Once you move from browsing hundreds of image thumbnails (Library) to actually just working on a single image (Develop), things speed up very nicely; no delay in the edits. Much has been posted in the Adobe forums about Lightroom's lack of speed lately, regardless of particular computer.
Hope that helps.
-J
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Having spent a little time with my Mac G5 and some 75Lv files I can see an upgrade to Intel Mac Pro would be nice. How much would I need to run smoothly without pause?
8GB RAM on a Intel MacPro, no more, no less.
David
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I wonder if CS4 will be faster on Windows Vista 64 bits or on MAC Leopard using only 32 bits (same processor , same RAM) ?
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I wonder if CS4 will be faster on Windows Vista 64 bits or on MAC Leopard using only 32 bits (same processor , same RAM) ?
it'll be faster on windows I think - but snow leopard (64bit new ma OS) will change that I think.
mitchell - a macpro w/ 8GB RAM and some fast internal drives should do you. upgrade the video card to a bit, CS4 takes advantage of video CPU.
having PS +LR + all your other stuff will eat into ram pretty quick. I routinely have those 2 plus flexcolor mail safari ichat open...
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Thanks everyone,
There seems to be a fair amount of agreement: Mac Pro with 8 gigs of Ram, and maybe a couple of fast hard drives.
A quick look at the Apple site looks like that takes me to $5000 even without the $800 Raid card which I was considering. Ou vay!
Best,
Mitchell
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Get the MacPro in its basic form and add memory you buy elsewhere as well as drives. This will save you a ton of money.
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Thanks everyone,
There seems to be a fair amount of agreement: Mac Pro with 8 gigs of Ram, and maybe a couple of fast hard drives.
A quick look at the Apple site looks like that takes me to $5000 even without the $800 Raid card which I was considering. Ou vay!
Best,
Mitchell
The expensive thing is the screen - figure $2K.
I would buy a used Mac Pro, and fill it with a couple of Raptors for boot drive and photo Raw files, and add an external NAS storage for the converted files.
Edmund
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Get the MacPro in its basic form and add memory you buy elsewhere as well as drives. This will save you a ton of money.
yeah, this is the way to go. skip that raid card, save you a bundle!!
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For sure.
8GB RAM for MPro's from Crucial $599.
From Apple "add $1,500"
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Is a raid system that beneficial?
I am working on large prints (around 2gig - scratch with layers up to 20gig). I am also stitching around 15 MFDB files into panoaramics at a time.
I keep saying to myself that I should install a raid 5 system. Maybe just going up to a new 8 core system with 8 gig of ram and some faster drives will make enough difference?
Right now I am on a dual power mac 2.8gig with 7gig of ram.
Cheers
Murray
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I'm just putting a new system together this week. The pieces should be here in a couple of days.
I ordered a 3Ghz 8 core with 2GB ram and one 1 Terabyte drive. That's the minimum configuration that one can get away with from Apple. I then ordered three more internal 1T drives and another 8GB of ram for under a thousand dollars, saving almost another $2K over Apple's pricing. A RAID card is unnecessary.
Based on advice from Chris Sanderson I will configure one of the drives as my boot drive and non-photo / video data drive, with a second as a mirror, using either Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner.
The other two drives are configured as striped, which makes them very fast, and these will be used for working and archive image and video files. These will be auto-backed up to an external 2T drive on a daily basis.
Speed and security.
Michael
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@michael
If you use aperture use one very fast drive as your database drive.
I use external Sata drivearrays for storage and my database is on a fast sATA TB drive, this way I have my tumbnails present whenever I need and the operation is very fast.
10GB internal is nice to work with especially when you have VMware running sometimes
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The idea most Apple fans have is that an upgrade for the MacPro & Macbook (pro) laptops is imminent. Maybe you should wait another 2 weeks? Expected date is 14th of October. Naturally you never know for sure but it might be worthwile.
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I wonder if CS4 will be faster on Windows Vista 64 bits or on MAC Leopard using only 32 bits (same processor , same RAM) ?
well you just answered your own question, but dont seem to want to hear the answer.
YES - from now for at least 2 years, all heavy duty Photoshop work will be much faster on a windows 64bit machine.
CS4 is in full 64bit code for windows only, but it remains 32bit for Mac.
so- what that means is a windows PC can access virtually all the RAM you have on your machine (8/16/24gb) and never bog down as it writes to disk.
as anyone who works on big files will tell you, the real production bottleneck is writing to scratch. get rid of that, as CS4 on Windows does, and you will dramatically increase production speed.
of course if you must have apple branded intel, you can, and just load it with windows.
otherwise, if you are after a true photoshop workstation, i.e. a production tool for maximum efficiency - I'd buy a 64bit windows machine at this point.
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Macbook Pros soon, but Mac Pro desktops likely not till January.
I couldn't wait.
Michael
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....the $800 Raid card which I was considering. Ou vay!
Read the reports over at barefeats.com about that Apple RAID card- basically it's a slow feature-few card for an exreme price compared to other available options on the market.
Not that it's even neccessary though.
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About the speed difference, I have to see but I think the Mac will win.
The reason I switched was because of the scans I make from my 6x7 film.
Cropping would take me under windows Vista64 with 10GB of RAM app 1-2 minutes.
Under MacOS on my MBP (lower specs than my windows machine) it took 3-4 seconds.
With the 22MP files I found the difference about equal.
My EXPECTATIONS are that the 64 bits version of CS4 will be faster and on 22MP files etc. you will see some profit on the PC compared to a quad core macpro.
On the 8 cores I wonder, I don't think a 64bits version will beat an 8 core CPU on 32bits.
But we'll see.
When working with large files (and that's why we want a 64bits version also) I don't see the PC making a 400% increase in speed.
I can't explain WHY the mac is so much faster but I did the test after this on my MBP with bootcamp also.
The 22MP files perform equal under bootcamp and Mac (or at least I can hardly see a difference) however the scans are MUCH (and I mean MUCH) faster on Mac OS.
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I'm not even sure why we started discussion of Windows vs. Mac. The differences are not just about a few seconds speed test in Photoshop. Swapping systems is a huge deal for most people, including investment in software. That's not what the OP posted about. Real world, every day workings, I think the debate over a possible speed increase in Vista is a moot point. We're talking seconds here, not hours. Besides, 64-bit processing is often over glorified. Just because a system is 64-bit does not make it automatically faster. Much more relies upon the actual architecture of the software and whether it's optimized to use that overhead to the fullest.
Get what you like and what you can afford. Same with cameras. Just because some crazy fanboys have tested down the Nth degree that one system is the holy grail, doesn't mean it works for you. I doubt you'll be disappointed in any Mac Pro system, regardless of how crazy you go with RAID and RAM. Above a fairly low price point, the return on investment (RoI, i.e., speed for your buck) becomes smaller and smaller. Is an extra couple of seconds or minute saved by investing in that $5000 RAID setup worth it? Only you can decide.
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This should clear things up
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/digital1.shtml (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/digital1.shtml)
Michael Amiraslani
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[quote name='michael' date='Oct 6 2008, 07:59 AM' post='227163']
I'm just putting a new system together this week. The pieces should be here in a couple of days.
I ordered a 3Ghz 8 core with 2GB ram and one 1 Terabyte drive. That's the minimum configuration that one can get away with from Apple. I then ordered three more internal 1T drives and another 8GB of ram for under a thousand dollars, saving almost another $2K over Apple's pricing. A RAID card is unnecessary.
Based on advice from Chris Sanderson I will configure one of the drives as my boot drive and non-photo / video data drive, with a second as a mirror, using either Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner.
I got 2x3.2 GHz Quad-core
With 8 GB from apple store.
If you get memory, other then apple
the computer heated up quickly.
& will have very bad sound
better of pay the extra for the memory, from apple store.
I got experience with other memory.
BlasR
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Depends on the memory you buy.
My wife owns a PC store which also sells mac and the modules they sell are exactly the same as the apple modules (slightly ticker coolingribs) and work great.
They are however a fourth of the apple price which is ridicilous.
Same goes for HDDs.
You have to make 100% sure however you buy 100% compatible memory, there are alot of modules out there that fit but for example have less cooling, those will bring trouble.
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Does anyone here happen to know if OWC ram upgrades are reliable? Their prices are excellent.
Eduardo
Depends on the memory you buy.
My wife owns a PC store which also sells mac and the modules they sell are exactly the same as the apple modules (slightly ticker coolingribs) and work great.
They are however a fourth of the apple price which is ridicilous.
Same goes for HDDs.
You have to make 100% sure however you buy 100% compatible memory, there are alot of modules out there that fit but for example have less cooling, those will bring trouble.