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bellimages

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iMac vs a MacPro upgrade
« on: June 28, 2020, 11:33:32 pm »

I have been using a 2010 MacPro for the last 10 years, combined with a NEC 30" monitor. I can spend around $1500 to install four SSD drives, a new video card, do a fresh install of Mojave (10.14). Downside is that I still have a 10 year old computer and monitor.

Or I can purchase a new 27" iMac for around $3,000. I've never used anything but a MacPro. Not sure if I'll be happy with a smaller monitor. Unfortunately I can't afford to buy a MacPro "trash can" or "cheese grater."

What are your opinions?
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deanwork

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Re: iMac vs a MacPro upgrade
« Reply #1 on: June 29, 2020, 11:00:13 am »

The cylinder ( trash can ) macs have been discontinued so your only option is used. Most of them are in the $2,000.00 range. The question would be how long can you hold on to the 30” display? 

A new IMac is going to be way faster that what you are used to and with a 5 k display and everything new. If you just don’t have to have a gamut larger than srgb I would go for that, and you are in warranty.

Personally I don’t like 30 inch displays and have all 27s. If you are viewing a lot of multiple files in Lightroom daily a 30 might make sense. But I’d rather have 2 27s, one good one and one budget one.

Finally, why would you need to spend 3k on an IMac? I don’t get that.

https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/imac/27-inch


Here are the affordable new equipment options we are left with:

IMac ( where Apple wants photographers to go but small gamut rgb  and if your display goes out you are screwed)

Mac Mini ( very good value if you have your own display or want full gamut rgb )

Mac Book Pro with an adapter for your own display ( not cheap but you also get a portable unit out of it )

John





 :)
I have been using a 2010 MacPro for the last 10 years, combined with a NEC 30" monitor. I can spend around $1500 to install four SSD drives, a new video card, do a fresh install of Mojave (10.14). Downside is that I still have a 10 year old computer and monitor.

Or I can purchase a new 27" iMac for around $3,000. I've never used anything but a MacPro. Not sure if I'll be happy with a smaller monitor. Unfortunately I can't afford to buy a MacPro "trash can" or "cheese grater."

What are your opinions?
« Last Edit: June 29, 2020, 03:32:01 pm by deanwork »
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kers

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Re: iMac vs a MacPro upgrade
« Reply #2 on: June 29, 2020, 03:06:38 pm »

If the NEC still works well it is an idea to buy a macmini - but first you have to find out if it can be connected.
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Pieter Kers
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Daverich

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Re: iMac vs a MacPro upgrade
« Reply #3 on: June 29, 2020, 05:42:56 pm »

If the NEC still works well it is an idea to buy a macmini - but first you have to find out if it can be connected.

It can. I just ordered a loaded MacMini to replace my Trashcan and it will connect to my NEC using the same adapter. I was going to get a 2019 Mac Pro until the announcement of switching over to the new processor and decided to get the Mini to tide me over for two or three years until the new stuff gets settled in.
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deanwork

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Re: iMac vs a MacPro upgrade
« Reply #4 on: June 29, 2020, 05:55:01 pm »

I’m in the same exact position as you guys.

You mind reporting back on how the new mini compares to your 2013 MacPro with large Photoshop files?

I’m VERY curious and would much rather buy something new.

It didn’t occur to me that they were holding off on a new series of Pros because of bringing the chip making in-house.


Here is an Eizo display that is not 4K, more like 3k, but appears a good value, as is the 4K Ben-q

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1566862-REG/eizo_cs2731_bk_coloredge_cs2731_27_hardware.html

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1360177-REG/benq_27_sw271_uhd_4k.html/?ap=y&ap=y&smp=y&smp=y&lsft=BI%3A514&gclid=Cj0KCQjwoub3BRC6ARIsABGhnyb2zt4xD-3R3tMq1cQQ71YbvfpNx5QliSS6-uCIava2-mOB_7ypfssaArYLEALw_wcB


John



quote author=Daverich link=topic=135458.msg1177233#msg1177233 date=1593466976]
It can. I just ordered a loaded MacMini to replace my Trashcan and it will connect to my NEC using the same adapter. I was going to get a 2019 Mac Pro until the announcement of switching over to the new processor and decided to get the Mini to tide me over for two or three years until the new stuff gets settled in.
[/quote]
« Last Edit: June 30, 2020, 03:11:25 pm by deanwork »
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Daverich

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Re: iMac vs a MacPro upgrade
« Reply #5 on: June 30, 2020, 02:20:59 pm »

I’m in the same exact position as you guys.

You mind reporting back on how the new mini compares to your 2013 MacPro with large Photoshop files?

I’m VERY curious and would much rather buy something new.

It didn’t occur to me that they were holding off on a new series of Pros because of bringing the chip making in-house.


Here is an Eizo display that is not 4K but appears a good value, as is the 4K Ben-q

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1566862-REG/eizo_cs2731_bk_coloredge_cs2731_27_hardware.html


John



quote author=Daverich link=topic=135458.msg1177233#msg1177233 date=1593466976]
It can. I just ordered a loaded MacMini to replace my Trashcan and it will connect to my NEC using the same adapter. I was going to get a 2019 Mac Pro until the announcement of switching over to the new processor and decided to get the Mini to tide me over for two or three years until the new stuff gets settled in.

It doesn't get here until the 7th-9th but once it's set up I can update this post. Apple said they plan to have the entire line transitioned over to ARM in the next two years so even though you will get hardware and software support for another 5-7 years, after 2 years you're going to start being left behind. How much effort will Adobe be putting into the Intel version of Photoshop in 4 years compared to the ARM version? My Trashcan has bits and pieces of software from 10-15 years ago because I've always used Migration Assistant to set up a new computer. I'm setting up the Mini from scratch with fresh, current installs of all of the programs that I use. I'm keeping the Trashcan on Mojave and will go back to that if the Mini doesn't work out. I'm not really expecting that it won't though.
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kers

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Re: iMac vs a MacPro upgrade
« Reply #6 on: June 30, 2020, 07:40:51 pm »

...How much effort will Adobe be putting into the Intel version of Photoshop in 4 years compared to the ARM version?...

Not so much for they already have it working on Intel...
I don't think it will be a problem untill Apple stops with support of Intel Machines.. 
and they just launced an 10.000$+ Intel macpro and before that an Intel  iMac pro still sold - without support from Apple/ Adobe???.... 8 years? 10 Years? not sooner.
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bellimages

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Re: iMac vs a MacPro upgrade
« Reply #7 on: June 30, 2020, 09:09:40 pm »

The 27" iMac that I configured has an 8-core Intel Core i( processor, 32BG of RAM, the Radeon Pro 580x with 8GB of memory, 1TB SSD storage. That brings the price to $3629.

I LOVE my 30" display. I fear that I won't care for a downsize monitor (note: I don't have room for two monitors).

Who knows how much longer the NEC will work. I feel good that it's given me 10 years of service. So the MacMini may not be a good idea, nor a MacBook Pro

Since I work in B&W 95% of the time, gamut isn't a big deal. And I ONLY use Photoshop for my work -- no Lightroom what so ever.


The cylinder ( trash can ) macs have been discontinued so your only option is used. Most of them are in the $2,000.00 range. The question would be how long can you hold on to the 30” display? 

A new IMac is going to be way faster that what you are used to and with a 5 k display and everything new. If you just don’t have to have a gamut larger than srgb I would go for that, and you are in warranty.

Personally I don’t like 30 inch displays and have all 27s. If you are viewing a lot of multiple files in Lightroom daily a 30 might make sense. But I’d rather have 2 27s, one good one and one budget one.

Finally, why would you need to spend 3k on an IMac? I don’t get that.

https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/imac/27-inch


Here are the affordable new equipment options we are left with:

IMac ( where Apple wants photographers to go but small gamut rgb  and if your display goes out you are screwed)

Mac Mini ( very good value if you have your own display or want full gamut rgb )

Mac Book Pro with an adapter for your own display ( not cheap but you also get a portable unit out of it )

John





 :)
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Jan Bell, Owner/Photographer, Bell Image

bellimages

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Re: iMac vs a MacPro upgrade
« Reply #8 on: June 30, 2020, 09:19:54 pm »

I did a side by side benchmark comparison of the Radeon 580x graphics card against the MacMini's built in Intel UHD Graphics 630. There is a LOT of difference. That said, does the MacMini lag when working on large Photoshop files (say 1GB in size)?


It can. I just ordered a loaded MacMini to replace my Trashcan and it will connect to my NEC using the same adapter. I was going to get a 2019 Mac Pro until the announcement of switching over to the new processor and decided to get the Mini to tide me over for two or three years until the new stuff gets settled in.
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deanwork

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Re: iMac vs a MacPro upgrade
« Reply #9 on: July 01, 2020, 09:31:17 am »


It seems like you can hook up a more advanced graphics card with the thunderbolt 3 connection. Someone mentioned that for demanding  4 k video applications. But I dont see why in the world you would need another card for Photoshop and Lightroom.  I guess we’ll find out eventually.




I did a side by side benchmark comparison of the Radeon 580x graphics card against the MacMini's built in Intel UHD Graphics 630. There is a LOT of difference. That said, does the MacMini lag when working on large Photoshop files (say 1GB in size)?
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kers

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Re: iMac vs a MacPro upgrade
« Reply #10 on: July 01, 2020, 12:35:54 pm »

It seems like you can hook up a more advanced graphics card with the thunderbolt 3 connection. Someone mentioned that for demanding  4 k video applications. But I dont see why in the world you would need another card for Photoshop and Lightroom.  I guess we’ll find out eventually.
LR started to make better use of the GPU i noticed; It uses for developing now the CPU all cores x 2  + the GPU.
photoshop still uses only a few cores mostly and GPU at some filters.
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JeffSD

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Re: iMac vs a MacPro upgrade
« Reply #11 on: July 15, 2020, 02:20:50 am »

Hi, Jan.

Like you, I have a 2010 Mac Pro. I've been upgrading it and the performance, for a 10 year old computer, still impresses me.

We have two iMacs in the house, but I wouldn't use them for photo editing because I'm sensitive to the glossy screen; would seriously miss the ability to rotate the screen 90 degrees for profile shots; and have a strong preference for my NEC color calibrated monitor.

Should you keep your classic Mac Pro, you might want to consider an OWC PCIe 6G SSD for the operating system (480GB for $169) and a second PCIe 6G SSD for your Photoshop scratch disk. I'm using a WD 2TB 6G Blue drive ($230 at Newegg) mounted on an OWC Accelsior S PCIe Adapter ($42.75). These drives will be fast and you can leave your data and time machine on inexpensive hard drives in the four upper expansion bays.

As you mentioned, a new video card is a must to upgrade to Mojave. You can get an Apple recommended Radeon RX 580 8GB for $299 at OWC. That's what I'm using, and the upgrade to Mojave was a snap. It has display port, HDMI and DVI-D connectivity.

So, for $740.75, plus tax, you have a fast and very capable Mojave machine that will perform well while you wait for the next big thing. That's what I'm doing, anyway.  ;D

One item you didn't mention is memory. The funny thing about Photoshop is that it isn't yet optimized to take advantage of my 10 year old six core Westmere Xeon processor, nor my 8GB Radeon GPU. What it does crave is memory. Earlier today I focus-stacked 30 raw files from a Nikon D850. It was slow going, but when I checked the activity monitor, the problem wasn't the CPU. It wasn't stressed at all. It was Photoshop consuming almost all of my 48GB of memory.

Whatever route you take, try to get as much memory as possible. The new Mac Mini looks very interesting, but I noticed that it tops out at 64GB of memory. For me, when it's time to put my Mac Pro in the museum I'll want at least 96GB of memory, with the opportunity to add more in the future.

Good luck!

Best,
Jeff 

Daverich

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Re: iMac vs a MacPro upgrade
« Reply #12 on: July 20, 2020, 05:26:58 pm »

I’m in the same exact position as you guys.

You mind reporting back on how the new mini compares to your 2013 MacPro with large Photoshop files?

I’m VERY curious and would much rather buy something new.

It didn’t occur to me that they were holding off on a new series of Pros because of bringing the chip making in-house.


Here is an Eizo display that is not 4K, more like 3k, but appears a good value, as is the 4K Ben-q

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1566862-REG/eizo_cs2731_bk_coloredge_cs2731_27_hardware.html

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1360177-REG/benq_27_sw271_uhd_4k.html/?ap=y&ap=y&smp=y&smp=y&lsft=BI%3A514&gclid=Cj0KCQjwoub3BRC6ARIsABGhnyb2zt4xD-3R3tMq1cQQ71YbvfpNx5QliSS6-uCIava2-mOB_7ypfssaArYLEALw_wcB


John



quote author=Daverich link=topic=135458.msg1177233#msg1177233 date=1593466976]
It can. I just ordered a loaded MacMini to replace my Trashcan and it will connect to my NEC using the same adapter. I was going to get a 2019 Mac Pro until the announcement of switching over to the new processor and decided to get the Mini to tide me over for two or three years until the new stuff gets settled in.

This goes back a little bit but you asked for feedback on my new Mac Mini. I've had it for about a week & a half, got it all set up from scratch and had some time to run a few tests and do some printing. It's a 2020 (2018) Mac Mini, 3.2 GHz i7 with 64 GB Ram. I bought it to replace a base model 2013 Mac Pro, also with 64 GB Ram. I'm surprised how much faster the Mini is than the Mac Pro. I've used Lloyd Chambers Photoshop tests/scripts for a long time as a benchmark.

https://macperformanceguide.com/OptimizingPhotoshopCS6-Benchmarks.html

The Mini completes 5 rounds of both the Medium & Huge scripts about 35-40% faster than the Mac Pro. That's with Photoshop 21.2.0. As a side note, at first his test didn't work with that version so I sent him an email to let him know. Less than 15 minutes later he had a version online that did work. Besides photography, I use DaVinci Resolve for video and the step up from the Mac Pro is noticeable. The Mini will scrub through a Timeline so fast it's hard to see it and rendering is much faster as well. Transcoding a one hour Tivo stream to .mp4 has gone from about an hour down to 20 minutes with the Mini although the fans kick in about halfway through the process. As a side note, going from the TB2 ports on the Mac Pro to the TB3 ports on the Mini doubles the write speed to the external drive I keep my photos on.

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kers

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Re: iMac vs a MacPro upgrade
« Reply #13 on: July 20, 2020, 05:55:58 pm »

Hi, Jan.

Like you, I have a 2010 Mac Pro. I've been upgrading it and the performance, for a 10 year old computer, still impresses me.
...
Jeff

At some point it is not worth spending more money on the good old macpro 5.1; but then they are very cheap at the moment and i still like the box with everything in it.
As you can read above the macmini is already way faster than the 2013 Macpro.  I guess the macmini is about 3x faster than the macpro 5.1, and it should be after 8 years of development.
You can change a lot in the mac pro 5.1 but not the motherboard, the base of the machine.
I still have a macpro 3.1 here and it still runs flawless, but is 5x slower than my new 2018 computer.
People on Windows have the luck they can buy something very very fast for only 2000€ and exactly how they like it ( a box!)


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JeffSD

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Re: iMac vs a MacPro upgrade
« Reply #14 on: July 24, 2020, 12:15:32 pm »

At some point it is not worth spending more money on the good old macpro 5.1; but then they are very cheap at the moment and i still like the box with everything in it.
As you can read above the macmini is already way faster than the 2013 Macpro.  I guess the macmini is about 3x faster than the macpro 5.1, and it should be after 8 years of development.
You can change a lot in the mac pro 5.1 but not the motherboard, the base of the machine.
I still have a macpro 3.1 here and it still runs flawless, but is 5x slower than my new 2018 computer.
People on Windows have the luck they can buy something very very fast for only 2000€ and exactly how they like it ( a box!)

Pieter, you're right, but after waiting (what seemed like forever) for the 2019 Mac Pro I was expecting to see a bigger performance improvement using the Adobe applications.

Bare Feats did a comparison of an upgraded 2010 12 core Mac Pro and the 2019 version. The conclusion:

"The 2019 Mac Pro 12-Core runs Adobe Pro Apps 31% to 66% faster than the 2010 Mac Pro 12-Core with a fast AMD GPU."

https://barefeats.com/mac-pro-2019-versus-2010-adobe.html

That's fine, but after 10 years I really expected better, given the cost of the 2019 machine.

Your comment about Windows makes me think that I should reconsider the vow I made over 10 years ago to never use another Windows computer. ;) 


deanwork

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Re: iMac vs a MacPro upgrade
« Reply #15 on: July 24, 2020, 01:02:47 pm »

Damn that Mac Mini i7 sounds very impressive. It gets expensive buying the ram from Apple though so I might have to brave doing that myself even as clumsy as I am working on micro devices, or hire someone to put the ram in. I don’t do any video but I’m surprised how well that’s working out. It seems it’s going be either that or a custom pc for me. I think the graphics card that comes with it should be fine for the Photoshop/Lightroom , inkjet print work I do.

John




This goes back a little bit but you asked for feedback on my new Mac Mini. I've had it for about a week & a half, got it all set up from scratch and had some time to run a few tests and do some printing. It's a 2020 (2018) Mac Mini, 3.2 GHz i7 with 64 GB Ram. I bought it to replace a base model 2013 Mac Pro, also with 64 GB Ram. I'm surprised how much faster the Mini is than the Mac Pro. I've used Lloyd Chambers Photoshop tests/scripts for a long time as a benchmark.

https://macperformanceguide.com/OptimizingPhotoshopCS6-Benchmarks.html

The Mini completes 5 rounds of both the Medium & Huge scripts about 35-40% faster than the Mac Pro. That's with Photoshop 21.2.0. As a side note, at first his test didn't work with that version so I sent him an email to let him know. Less than 15 minutes later he had a version online that did work. Besides photography, I use DaVinci Resolve for video and the step up from the Mac Pro is noticeable. The Mini will scrub through a Timeline so fast it's hard to see it and rendering is much faster as well. Transcoding a one hour Tivo stream to .mp4 has gone from about an hour down to 20 minutes with the Mini although the fans kick in about halfway through the process. As a side note, going from the TB2 ports on the Mac Pro to the TB3 ports on the Mini doubles the write speed to the external drive I keep my photos on.
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kers

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Re: iMac vs a MacPro upgrade
« Reply #16 on: July 24, 2020, 04:10:46 pm »

...
One item you didn't mention is memory. The funny thing about Photoshop is that it isn't yet optimized to take advantage of my 10 year old six core Westmere Xeon processor, nor my 8GB Radeon GPU. What it does crave is memory. Earlier today I focus-stacked 30 raw files from a Nikon D850. It was slow going, but when I checked the activity monitor, the problem wasn't the CPU. It wasn't stressed at all. It was Photoshop consuming almost all of my 48GB of memory.
...
Jeff

Jeff you are right about photoshop- it consumes Ram and never let go... I have 64 gb ram and sometimes stop photoshop to free the ram.
Now Lightroom ( classic ) is a different story: As i mentioned it is fast at developing raws in sequence and as i said above- it uses allt he available harware- . I am sure that for 30 d850 raw images it also consumes about 20GB ram.
The photoshop engeneers have some work to do.  ( i have a fast recent built computer and it does about 30+ d850 Raws a minute to vonvert them to 16 bit tiff)


About the new mac pro 2019:

it seems not a very good buy for photoshop/LR and what i read C1.
It seems it is still not optimised to take use of these programs. It is good for final cut pro with the afterburner...
My 2018built 10 core computer is overall a factor 5 faster than my 8 mac pro2008.

« Last Edit: July 24, 2020, 04:19:40 pm by kers »
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