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

Your nearest re-seller appears to be KRCS in Nottingham and they will undoubtedly have the beast to see. I fell out with KRCS when they bought our previously reliable shop in Kidderminster. The price is much the same from the applestore direct.

You are right to go for the twin processor beast. The cost may seem high to begin with, but I have been buying macs for nearly 20 years and never regretted paying out for one when it was newish.

I have had good value out of the 3 year extended warranty on my powerbook. There is a wealth of on-line info on problems and have never been failed by it.

If you want an actual shop the one here in Tewkesbury is good and service dept always helpful.

I have now used NX on a Mac Pro. I judged its suitability on running NX alone and I have to say I am very disappointed. My machine (Exactly as Duncan describes) seems as fast. The seems to be no benefit running NX on a high end Mac. The machine in question also had Photoshop CS2 installed which also ran slower than I expected, it even loaded slower than my 2003 spec PC!

Multicore machines don't perform any better than unicore when running NX, application and operating system need both to be wrtten for such machines.

Exactly right - (insert gobsmacked smiley)

STOP PRESS

Just tried the same edit workflow on my PC at home and things were real S L O W. This puts the Mac pro back into serious consideration, CS2 was still slower on the Mac!

Stephen; You are showing the typical swinging mood buyer behavior that is quite natural and expected, before seeing that one aggressive sale pressor (Person) that can sell you what ever he has in the store.
So as long as you have the decisive power (Money in you wallet), make sure to do your home work fine.
If you finally decide on Mac, you may still think over as if you have noticed hopefully, the Tiger is getting absolute or at least old as Leopard is on the way. On Christmas Apple store told me for spring/summer.

LINK

You don't want to buy something that you need to upgrade in a month or two. So if settling for mac remember to delay your purchase a bit as you will get the newer OS at no extra price (Unlike PC mac won't upgrade you free for soon to appear OS).

Sorry if I was more of decision-obstacle maker than helper, but just wanted to make sure you know all your options.

Thanks for the information Sassan, I am aware that Leopard is about to the released. You are right a few months postponing the decision may the a good thing.

However I tend not to get very excited about new releases especially if the current version does all I ask.

Like nirofo, I've also compiled a parts list but this time from aria (my main supplier) and is Vista ready.

PSU: JeanTech Storm 700W SLi/CrossFire £80 from PC World
One of the components you don't want to skimp on as a decent one really does make a difference. I've got one of these in my machine now and there's a little digital readout on the back telling you what your machine is using power wise. Doesn't always use 700W - mine rests at about 140W when sat doing nothing.

CPU: Intel Coer 2 Duo E6600 2x2.4GHz 1066MHz LGA775
If going dual core go for Intel as they're ahead of AMD. If going for quad core then go for AMD and not Intel - you can see where each company invested their money.

MOBO: Abit Fatal1ty FP-IN9 SLi £140.94
Very nice motherboard overall, enables you to go to 32GB of RAM although Windows XP Pro is stable at a maximum of 4GB.

CASE: Akasa Zen Silent £30.47
Comes without a PSU. I rarely buy cases with their own.

HD: 2x400GB Western Digital Caviar SATAII £135.72
Stripe these for extra data security. If one fails the data is backed up on the other.

RAM: 2xKingston 1GB DDR2 800 (total 2GB RAM) £93.94
Paired RAM for better performance. Kingson and Corsair are the only two brans I personally use.

GFX: nVidia GeForce 8600GT 512MB DDR3 £93.94
You can install another of these at a later date to run side by side for twice the graphics power. Runs in SLi mode.

Total: £654.40 (exl. p&p)

Chances are you might even be able to save some money by using certain parts from your existing machine like DVD drives, mouse, keyboard, card reader etc.

If your current machine came with XP pre-installed or you only have XP Home then I'd add about an extra £120 on top as you'll need Pro to handle the dual core CPU. I'd stay away from Vista for a while as not all drivers for all hardware are available yet and I know a few people who've gone back to XP because of it.

Attached is a screengrab of my task manager showing two processors in XP.

Another thing to ask yourself is the native NX written for Windows or Unix and then what flavour of unix OS. I would think they are using a cross-compiler for other platforms. Very rare and high maintance costs for software houses to have 2 versions of native code dispite being written in a so called common code such as C++.

There is no problem running dual core processors in Windows XP providing your running SP2, it's by a mile faster and easier to work with than that latest load of bloatware from Microsoft. I still wouldn't touch Vista with a barge pole, at least until SP1 is released, even then I would need to do a lot of work removing the unecessary software bits I didn't need and do serious tweaking to get it to run the way it should straight out of the box. Nearly everything on your computer runs slower, that's if you can get it to run at all, even with the latest all singing and dancing hardware! It needs and demands masses of memory, (1GB at least) to get anything decent out of it and as you have already found out, Capture NX and Photoshop doesn't run well on Vista. For peace of mind and large cash savings stick with a PC loaded with Windows XP Pro SP2 and at least 2GB of memory. AMD AM2 Dual Core or Intel Dual Core processors, it doesn't matter which, either is more than capable of handling anything you can throw at it, (AMD's cheaper). I'm still using an AMD Barton Core 2.8Ghz and 2GB of DDR1 memory with more than adequate results on NX and Photoshop. Oh yes, and I can still download e-mails.

nirofo.

Forgot to mention that loading Photoshop CS2 on my machine takes about 2 seconds. If too much is already open it takes up to about 5 seconds.

I am pretty sure that XP Home does handle a dual core CPU i.e. allow both cores to be used.

I do agree that Vista might be too new to be worth using. Most businesses will stick with XP for the next year or two on the grounds of cost and stability.

After researching the subject on the Internet looking for both positive and negative information I decided to call the Apple centre and discuss my disappointment of the previous day. I tested NX for real after tweeking and adjusting my PC to squeeze all performace from it and my D2X full frame RAW conversion took and amazing 3:15. I normally crop and apply 'faster' noise reduction so things so take as long. Average approx 1:00 for conversion. The same image converted using the Mac Pro took .... less than 10 seconds. The particular model on display only had 1GB memory and only 20M remaining after loading a D2X RAW file so I was running it at its worst.

I type this message using my newly setup (took 10 mins inc getting out of box) Mac Pro with 3GB memory!

Thanks all for your help and assistance.

(no spell checker yet in Safari, no aplogies until I have something setup)

Deliberate, or just ironic? :) Firefox has a spell checker built in, available for Mac OSX from here:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/product...osx&lang=en-GB

Hope you are happy with your new machine and it gives you many hours of fun, or not so many hours, depending on your perspective.

Presumably, you have to buy another copy of Nikon NX to run on Mac? Or do Nikon allow you to swap the licence over?

LOL! you know I would come round to FireFox one day! I'll see if Internet Explorer 7.0 works first :D

Sadly, a PC NX product key does not work for a Universal Mac version so I am running the 30 day trial for the moment.

I'll need to transfer Adobe CS to the Mac though.

I did think that you'd be missing your beloved IE when I saw you'd done the deed. You'd better not let other Mac users know that you're running IE in Windows emulation mode on your Mac, you'll have a lynch mob after you. Such acts are treason!

Well, its official I am now a FireFox 2.0 user. I did see if there was IE that would run under OS X but sadly Microsoft stopped developing their greatest work since V5.0. I would use Safari but it does not seen to occupy the whole width of the screen only 50% whereas Firefox seems to 'maximise' at 85% - Strangle.

Spell check is quite good leaving an 'office' style red underline.

Congratulation on new toy.

I still use old IE under mac but every time get that security warnings makes me to think twice to do something serious on it and as you said, Microsoft site refers you to use Safari.

If by screen size occupancy, you mean the size of window in mac, you can adjust that as you need by holding the mouse bottom (Don't ask me which bottom:)) when pointing ONLY to the right lower corner of window and dragging to the size you like, unlike windows that let you use any border for this function (And people think mac is smarter).

Welcome to the New platform syndrome. Patience is strongly advised and helpful for next few weeks:)

How strange! About three years ago I was into web development more serious than I am now and Safari was often used for testing my work. The conclusion I came to was that Safari doesn't adhere to the W3C standards. Some sites I either had to forget about supporting Safari or spend a lot of time getting it to work.

As was mentioned earlier Microsoft ceased developing IE for the Mac, stopping at v5.

I've not yet used Firefox on the Mac so don't have an idea of how well it works but knowing Mozilla it'll be as good as the PC if not better.

Have fun with your new toy Stephen, they're great machines and you'll find it won't crash half as much as the Mac OS has always been solid.

Might want to invest in a two button mouse though ;)

I tried Firefox 2 for a while but didn't like it as much as 1.5 and it has never recommended upgrading, I suspect 2 is really a Beta for mac and unless you want the spell checker, being unable to get rid of tabs bar is just a waste of screenspace. Why anybody should want IE is beyond me.

PS Stephen: you should be able to get windows of all and any application whatever size you want by dragging out bottom RH corner

Just an example of full system (Entery level) offered today by Dell, including Samsug 19" LCD flat monitor for US$ 450 or same with 22" Samsung monitor for $100 more. Its with free shipping (USA). Tax to be added in States where Dell has Dealership such as CA(about 8 percent).


LINK


AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual-Core 4000+

Genuine Windows® XP Home Edition

1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz- 2DIMMs

80GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache™

16x DVD+/-RW Drive

19 inch Samsung 920NW Widescreen LCD Monitor

NVIDIA GeForce 6150 LE Integrated Graphics GPU

Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio



And for Vista and larger hard drive, this one is for 50 bucks more:

LINK

Sassan, if someone told you to forget about your Mercedes because Lexus was better value, you probably wouldn't want to know? I know I had a series 4 VW Golf, which is one of the most popular cars in its class, and it was one of the most unreliable and unpleasant to drive cars I have ever had. Replacement Corolla is nearest thing to the pre GM Saabs that I can find, fine to drive all day no mechanical problems. Same with computers, some folks, in fact most on this forum have PCs and are probably happy and in control. But my heart sinks whenever I have to do anything on one (used to be the same in offices) as in MOST cases, it is not properly set up and the user has little idea how to perform the simplest operations. You don't come across mac users like that, unless you count yourself.:)

Chris; Considering only 2 % of population using Mac, You don't come across mac users too often too.:) I get the pleasure to know them once and if spotted. No matter what I like you very much:)
Consider if you could try RR first, that can be changed with your VW, when RR is half the price then would you get out of that:) (I think your Lexus vs Mercedes eg works better though). Unfortunate thing is we try to always go with the notation, "My God is better than yours", without knowing the other God or for that mater what God is... Oppsss this is not in my principles to discuss religion so my apology. Its good to have choices. Use yours as wisely as you are.

I am not sure I understand the gist of the conversation. But I'll add my penn'orth.

VW have long had a high reputation in the UK and yet user experience suggests that it is not deserved, at least as far as reliability is concerned. Mercedes also has a bad reputation, though they are now making big efforts to improve.

I am a cheap skate. I use Windows on a PC. I drive a Ford. But I (usually) buy Nikon rather than Sigma etc. Sometimes it pays to pay IMO.

Like Eastman with Kodak and Ford with er, Ford, the brilliance of Gates and IBM was not in making the best, but in making the affordable. I suspect that there would be few people with home computers if it were not for the PC - or, at least, we'd still be playing on Spectrums.

For the record the mac share of market at 2% is USA desktop. For example mac is top of European education market 15% (Dell 14%) and 19% & 59% in French & Swiss education.

I don't think any of that is relevent. What matters is that it is usually smaller companies that carry out intelligent R&D and make technical advances. Larger companies are rarely interested in anything other than maximising their profits. The first generation of 'IBM comaptible' PCs held back computing for a decade, Windows 98 being the first usable version of Windows which Mac, Atari and Amiga had been using for a decade. Microsoft killed off the mac Darwin proposal that would have made vast savings for us all on software (as each sub-set of functions would run in same windows) both financial and ease of use/learning.

The route to making any machine cheaper is to make it last longer, not deliberately build in obsolescence. I think my 1989 mac IIci is still running at a collectors after having being used by my daughter for uni around 2000 and capable of running earlier version of every program I then had. My 1998 one is still going happily in a Kenyan charity. It would read everything, mac, PC, Atari back to 1987.

Lastly, most high tech machines are way beyond what the buying consumer can evaluate and most reviews are 'buggins turn' promo. Fortunately cameras have not become monopolised by an antisocial company and we do still have a good choice and the reviews are more serious. Don't anyone knock or mock the smaller players.

Zeb, striping doesn't provide any extra security at all. What striping does is write a portion of the data to each of two discs simultaneously, there's no copy of your data involved and if you lose one disc you're up a brown creek sans paddle. Striping is used to improve the speed of writing data to a disc array.

Mirroring, on the other hand, does provide this security but the backup reduces the usable space to half the capacity of the array. Mirroring and striping can be combined to provide increased write performance and backup but this requires an array of at least 4 (ideally matched) discs (with half the capacity being available).

Actually, you could go a bit further than that. A lot of businesses are only now looking at switching from Windows 2000 over to XP. Bigger firms tend to be very conservative, for the very good reason that mistakes and bugs in an OS cost them big dollars. It will be a long time before Vista gains much space on the corporate desktop: lots of downside to it, no upside.

Up in the big end of town, the motto is usually "never buy a Microsoft product before Service Pack 2 comes out". That's an excellent working rule-of-thumb.

oops! I always get these the wrong way round!!! :D

Just reading back through the posts... I can't imagine why anyone would want to buy anything from Dell considering their parts are budget parts? I don't know many IT engineers who would buy one. None of those I've worked with would!