Pro Quad 3gighz Advice Needed
I am a graphic design/video editor. Looking to upgrade my mac g5 with 4 gigs of ram. Should I upgrade to the quad g5 pro 3 gighz with 8 gigs of ram? I also will be do video editing/encore on top of using Photoshop Illustrator Indesign.
Will it be a significant upgrade. Are the new upgrades realy worthit for cs3. Or will it pay divendends on the release on cs 4 etc. Does it realy make sense to hold off for the Dual Octos?
Which video card would you recommend for dual 30 inch monitors? Or 1 30 inch mac and a wacom Cintique?
Thanks in Advance
Vincent D
Will it be a significant upgrade. Are the new upgrades realy worthit for cs3. Or will it pay divendends on the release on cs 4 etc. Does it realy make sense to hold off for the Dual Octos?
Which video card would you recommend for dual 30 inch monitors? Or 1 30 inch mac and a wacom Cintique?
Thanks in Advance
Vincent D
Comments
Which video card would you recommend for dual 30 inch monitors? Or 1 30 inch mac and a wacom Cintique?
Thanks in Advance
Vincent D
If your main pointing device is a graphic tablet - I'd avoid dual monitors.
C.
If your main pointing device is a graphic tablet - I'd avoid dual monitors.
C.
Thanks for the advice. What is your advice on the video card? Get the top of the line Nvidia or not realy worthit unless im doing 3d rendering?
http://www.barefeats.com/octopro1.html
This is what they say (good wrapup)
We did run the "test-compute-speed" with digLloydTools (DLT) on the 8 core. Its aggregate rate was 1204MB/sec (versus the 4 core's 601MB/s). That says that if the task is pure CPU, the 8 core is twice as fast as the 4 core. But if your task has to do a lot of interaction with memory, the advantage drops almost to nothing -- as we saw with Photoshop CS3 and Aperture.
Wait to see others in the next week. I'd bet going to a RAID 0 w/ Rapter drives and 4 GB of extra memory would be a better overall preformance boost.
Thanks for the advice. What is your advice on the video card? Get the top of the line Nvidia or not realy worthit unless im doing 3d rendering?
If you need the speed right now then go with the Octo Mac Pro. It's a solid value if you need some grunt right now.
I'd reccommend you go light on the GPU right now. I've a hunch that Apple is going to deliver the latest G80 based Nvidia product once Leopard is announced/shipped in June with new OpenGL drivers. The GPU is going to be VERY important in Leopard. Your UI will have a constant threaded connection so I'd look to spend a bit here to get a nice card. A Nvidia 8800 would be a nice option if we get it. You don't need a Quadro unless you're using a 3D app and need certified drivers.
Realize that you won't see a huge increase in Photoshop but video encoding should be fast since that is CPU bound rather than Photoshop being memory bound. If you're using Final Cut Pro expect to see even more reliance on the GPU and under Leopard much improved threading and usage of multi-core computers.
Memory bandwidth is going to affect all multi-core systems until late 2008 so if you need to get a computer today you can safely skip the Penryn update late this year and upgrade later to a Nehalem based system.
Hope this isn't too techy. The take home message is this.
If you need POWER that can last you 3-+4 years easily and Octo Mac Pro and fast GPU will get you there along with Leopard. If you are undecided about needing the power then waiting another 6 months isn't going to hurt you of course. Evolution marches on.
Im still debating about the monitor setup I will go. Its between 1 Wacom Cintiiq or dual (30) inch studio displays.
Since photoshop can now make mpeg/flash files. By making a rendering of all layers taken. Im still guesing the dual quads dont take advantage of the extra speed.
Take care
Vincent
Save your money and get in line early for the Penryn based Quads coming late this year. They offer larger 6MB cache (per dual core ) and improved cache accuracy. Please there will be a new motherboard platform as well.
That'll carry you forward for the foreseeable future.
Thanks for the advice. What is your advice on the video card? Get the top of the line Nvidia or not realy worthit unless im doing 3d rendering?
I think there are three Mac Pro options -
The cheaper NVidia7300
The ATI X1900
The NVidia Quadro
The ATI and the Quadro have much better games performance than the 7300.
Professionally the video card helps producing fast 3d previews used in Maya / Lightwave.
(or Softimage / Max on the PC). In 2D apps, I doubt whether you'd notice much difference.
If you use these 3d applications on a daily basis for truly massive 3d models - then a fast 3D card is essential.
Personally, I do a fair amount of 3D work - and I find the cheaper 7300 card to be quite adequate for my needs. When it comes down to rendering the images - that's done on the CPUs and the graphics cards sit idle!
What's more important to me is the 7300 card leaves the Mac Pro a *silent* computer.
what type of graphics are you working on? trade show files get really heavy but for the basic print world like brochures...you dont need a freaken 8 core for that. what you would need is lots of ram so you can have all your applications open at once and you do need a good graphics card. illustrator and indesign really tax the system and screen redraw can be a problem with complicated pages.
whats up with the dual thirty inch monitors? i would get one thirty inch monitor and a good size wacom tablet.
in short, anything from the bottom line to the high end promac will be fine for you. max it out in ram and get a good (not the freaken best) graphics card. and look into performance raids.
Sometimes when transfering over 3d rendered objects in illustrator to photoshop as smart objects. It goes near instant transfer. Of course you could use a 3 gighz machine with 1 gig of ram to do this. But it wont be nearly as efficient.
Im finding i have alot more time to work on the design rather than just getting the job done under deadlines. It was well worth the investment. This shall last me a very long time.