Which Mac

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jljones

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After some time, I now have the budget to buy a Mac Pro. Most of my useage is Lightroom and Photoshop and the usual suspects for email, text etc. I just wondered if Mac users here found the performance difference between the quad and eight core Mac Pros to be worth the money. I also believe that memory capacity is more limited in the quad. Any thoughts based on experience gratefully received - I'm also looking to replace my display and will probably get an Eizo.
Thanks very much
Jeremy
 
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How many things do you like to do at the same time? And how many images are you usually working with?
 
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Hi Victoria

I tend to work on a single image at a time but do batch process on occasions. I always shoot in RAW (D3 and D7''), files aren't that big yet but that may change with new cameras I'm eyeing. Having said that, while I'm making DVDs or exporting or uploading to FTP sites, I'd like to be able to keep processing images in LR or Photoshop or both. I tend to think the faster processor will keep me quiet for that little bit longer. I also intend to have all four drives filled with 1TB units and as I'll have two displays, a sensibly specced graphics card.

Thanks for getting back and hope that gives a bit more info. I'm a photographer with years of film and darkroom experience so working in the 'Lightroom' is in many ways more pleasurabe. I just want to make sure that my time at the computer is better spent without waiting too long for the machine to do its stuff.

Jeremy
 
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Well, I've got the early 2''8 8-core with 14gb of RAM, EIZO CG241W and ACD 23", and the basic graphics card. I like the fact that it's very rarely unresponsive, even while exporting from LR, rendering a load of LR previews, running a PS batch, and browsing the web, with at least 1' other programs open and active. I do use all 8 cores on a regular basis, so for me it was a no-brainer.

That said, not everyone pushes their computer quite as hard as I like to, so for users just using Lightroom and not doing anything else, 4 cores is plenty as things stand today - but that's not to say the next couple of years things won't have changed, and programs will become even more hungry, so it also depends on how long you want to keep the machine.
 
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Thanks Victoria - not really a Lightroom forums question but appreciate your response/advice.

I'll go for 8 core - the challenge is now to find a good display.

Thanks once again.

Jeremy
 
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I'll probably go with Eizo, but it would be nice to find a 3'" display that kept the quality across the entire screen...
Jeremy
 
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Before you buy, I highly recommend you read Lloyd Chambers' Macintosh Performance Guide:

http://macperformanceguide.com/index.html

It is geared specifically towards digital photographers. Lloyd does a lot of testing and backs up his comments with real data, as opposed opinions. His observations about core usage by Photoshop and Lightroom are quite revealing!

For an excellent evaluation on monitors for digital photography, see Will Crockett's article:

http://www.shootsmarter.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=164&acat=16

Cheers,

Peter
 
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The tips in Lloyd Chamber's article are very good. If you need to run a load of exports really quickly, splitting up into 2 or more exports is a really good idea, and works very nicely. The multiple core performance has been tempered so that you can carry on working on other things in Lightroom while the export is running, rather than having to stop and wait for it to finish, but it could probably do with a 'turbo' button to automatically stack up a number of exports if you're not going to need to use the computer for a while.
 
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