Seriously considering an Apple Mac Pro
 

Many regular members here will know I am dissatisfied with my aging PC, despite recent minor upgrade.

All I use a computer for is e-mail and D2X RAW viewing and editting with NX.

So, with this limited used I am thinking of a mac....(again) and the mac pro has caught my eye with two dual core xeon processors and bags of ram it seems a perfect choice but before I take the plunge I need to see one in action or receive absolute performance data for the mac version of NX.

Does anyone know where I can view a mac pro - usual places don't seem to stock this performance beast!

Now why would you want to lash out all that money on a Mac system just to read e-mails and render NEF files in NX ?????

nirofo.

I can understand the choice of a Mac as it's great for graphic and video work but spending that amount of money I can't quite fathom.

We've got a few Macs in the family and they've proven to be quite expensive to run. Mainly because software isn't as widely available for the Mac as it is the PC. There's far more shareware and free software for the PC. We've noticed there seems to be a lot more "budget" software that is released as shareware than free.

When my mum bought her Mac she paid a bit extra to get a year worth of technical help from Apple themselves. That has now expired and she either has to pay more to get more support time or search through the net or ask me for help.

I've recently upgraded my PC to a high level for about £500. I've got dual core AMD, 1GB of DDR2 800 RAM (very fast), SATA hard drives and a nice 256MB GDDR3 graphics card.

I recently helped a friend build a new PC to a very silly spec level (includes dual core Intel, 768MB graphics card, 2GB DDR2 800, water cooled and 660MB SATA hard drives) In total he spent about £900. If applications/games get too intensive he can buy another 768MB graphics card and run the two side by side together.

My mum regularly gets an Apple Mac magazine (I think iCreate) and they mention the 8core Mac which uses two quad core Xeon processors. Benchmarks showed it didn't perform that much faster than two dual core processors.

The great thing with a PC is you can take anything out and upgrade it (other hardware permitting) where with a Mac it's not that simple. My brother has a (now quite old) tower based Mac and he's had thoughts of moving to a PC because it can be expanded so easily.

Two main sites I buy components from are www.aria.co.uk and www.komplett.co.uk.

You'll be surprised how cheap you can upgrade for or even build new.

Stephen you got yourself two very nice answers so far.

You know I am not a MacLover but do have several Mac at home just to be able to give my half a penny advise.

I just looked at my local shop and no surprise a full feledge mac 8core is just south of 5K US $ that I prefer to buy a second hand car at that price.

LINK

Now remember that stepping into a new platform comes with its hassles of not knowing the very fundamental things that can be very frustrating.

Other things you want to consider is that a benchmark test is only good as a pop up ad on your pc. If you believe the ad, then believe the benchmark as these tests are so easy to be tweak to the direction of giving the favorable response by the pre sets of conditions set by the cleaver (Not so honest or politically correct, business minded) technicians. Depending on whom you are reading, you can get any kind of answer the designer want you to believe. So don't hope high when seeing an easy to understand, appearing end result and surely have a grain of salt to analyze who is saying what and how much you can believe.

Frankly if you need to know the bottom line, Photoshop runs faster on PC platform of equal horse power than Mac and video editing softwares (Especially the render part) runs faster on Mac than PC (Assuming you are using FinalCut on Mac as opposed to Adobe premiere pro, that is a different story and debate). I have done very successful video editing under both platform and to me the difference are slight (Same as photo editing process). If your primary intention is to use photo editing software, then you may actually do yourself a disfavor to switch to Mac. Now don't forget you may need to buy yourself a lot of new software, as your current pc softwares are not compatible, yes you can run them under windows emulation but they question is why.
If you just add ram to your new mac, Get ready, you loose your warranty on machine. Mac doesn't want you to be smart, buy your part cheap, upgrade or repair for very cheap as it is the sky that is the limit in pc world. You take it to Mac dealer for anything in the other hand and be generous to pay the bills. Absent minded costumers make a better candidate when thinking of the figures on bill. Every accessory in mac is 20-100 percent more expensive than equivalent in pc. The new power macs are actually very nice in terms of ease to open the case (Did I mentioned that they are really silent too in case you put them in the bedroom so you should not get a complain from spouse) but I am still to figure out how to open the case of my powerpc mac 6500 as there is no screw, no way to logically make you think you can open it (Just to change the DVD and ram), well with my angry wife on lack of space at home, I am determined to break it open just to see the R-rated version of mac before binning it.

Make sure to talk to some of your friends who own and run your intended mac and figure out if really it worths it.

I have put most of my pcs together myself and always the specification has best suited my needs at least tag price. Checking the Dell's outlet, the top of line XPS with water cooler sink for overclocking, Mega mega ram storage where much better priced when compare to mac but well then this is your money, spend it how it may please you best.

My aging computer is quite noisy and runs XP. As Vista is rapidly becoming more accepted I need new hardware to upgrade to this. I understand I need to operate with Vista to take full advantage of multicore CPU's but Vista.

If I have to learn a new operating system and upgrade hardware then it seems I might as well consider a Mac. iMac's seem to be integrated into a monitor which I don't favour as I prefer flexibility to change my monitor or continue with my Sony Trinitron 19" display I am familiar with. Hence seriously considering Mac pro. Pricing PC hardware including case and Vista with lots of RAM and a high performance Core 2 Due CPU goes beyond £1000 and a 2.66GHz Mac pro with 1GB RAM is available at £1500. The difference being approx 50% but all hardware in a Mac should be perfectly suited and tuned to OS X (Tiger) and hopefully squeeze more performance than an equivalent PC.

Whilst I enjoy the benefits of shooting RAW, the downside in longer processing time is getting me down. If NX runs 50% faster on a Mac compared with PC/Vista then I shall be happy. If I can get current JPEG performance from my existing system from RAW/NX/Mac pro then I hope to enjoy my post processing more.

Be careful as Vista Home Basic and Home Premium do not support multiple CPUs, and some might argue they do not support 1 CPU, but let's pass over that. Other versions of Vista support multiple CPUs.

XP Pro also supports multiple CPUs, and you might be able to get a copy cheap.

Regarding NX, I use Nikon Capture and it is a dog speed wise. Before my hard disks died I used Rawshooter, a free third party RAW viewer, to do the preliminary selection of images to keep and delete. It was good enough to judge sharpness and composition but IMO colours were poor. I would then view selected images in NC. I must get round to re-installing Rawshooter.

BTW one of the best ways to improve performance is to increase the RAM. I would say that 1.5GB is the minimum and 2GB+ preferred. 1GB is not enough for heavy graphics processing IMO.

Increasing RAM on my existing machine did improve thing at lot but NX shows a preview of an image in macro blocks and CPU has to process quickly or redraw is noticeable and slow. RAM caches these macro blocks so any part of an image has been viewed before will display faster. I have a 4Mpx D2Hs and my existing machine is more than capable processing and displaying its RAW's if only I could find the same level of performance to view and display 12Mpx D2X images.

Going to look at NX on a 2.66GHz 1GB RAM Mac pro soon as I have found a retailer in Nottingham and will advise performance.

I too have an aging PC, the motherboard/CPU is the same as yours IIRC (MSI K7N2 Delta-L, Athlon XP 3200?). I decided to take the plunge and buy a new machine as the cost of upgrading the guts was the same sort of price as I could buy a new base unit from the Dell factory outlet. These are refurbished returns, with full guarantee, and come without monitors - I too have decided to keep my CRT instead of switching to flat panel.

I seriously considered a mac as my primary use is image editing. But the cost of a new mac was double the price of an equivalent spec PC, plus I'd have the cost of having to buy new software applications. It was this extra software cost that made me decide that I should stick with PC. New copy of Capture One, new copy of Photoshop, all the little utilities such as Nero, etc, that don't cost a lot on their own, but soon add up, plus the much greater cost of the mac hardware, no thanks, I'm sticking with PC.

Dell factory outlet is here:
http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/pr...=uk&l=en&s=dfh

Here's a spec and price list from EBuyer.com to build a computer that will do everything you want and more, spec can be altered to suit yourself!!!

nirofo.


http://www.ebuyer.com 28/05/2007

1 = Gigabyte GA M57SLI-S4 SKT AM2 Nvidia MCP55P PCI-E 8Channel audio ATX
motherboard.
Sort Code: 113844 50 in stock
Price inc Vat = £56.11

1 = AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ (2.8GHz) Socket AM2 2MB L2 Cache (2x1MB)
Retail Boxed Processor.
Sort Code: 124915 104 in stock
Price inc Vat = £99.53

2 = OCZ 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 CL 4-4-4-15 PLATINUM XTC
with LIFETIME WARRANTY Memory.
Sort Code: 116755 18 in stock
Price for 2 kits (4GB) inc Vat = £136.40

1 = Innovision 3D 8600GTS 256MB DVI PCI-E Graphics Card.
Sort Code: 126947 155 in stock
Price inc Vat = £96.66

2 = Seagate ST3400620AS 400GB SATAII Hard Drive 7200RPM 16MB Cache -
OEM.
Sort Code: 113434 42 in stock
Price for 2 drives inc Vat = £123.76

2 = NEC Optiarc 7173A 18xDVD±RW/RAM DL LabelFlash Black Bare Drive.
Sort Code: 117549 136 in stock
Price for 2 inc Vat = £33.64

1 = Extra Value Black Internal 3.5" All-In-One Card Reader With USB2.0 Port
Sort Code: 119751 204 in stock
Price inc Vat = £6.80

1 = Antec Sonata II Piano Black Quiet Midi Tower Case- With 450W
SmartPower2.0 PSU.
Sort Code: 093403 256 in stock
Price inc Vat = £58.35

Cart Total: £611.25
Shipping Band: £4.99
Shipping Surcharge: £2.70
Subtotal: £618.94
VAT: £108.34

Total: £727.28