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So is the new black garbage can worth getting?


algrove

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I have the 5.1 Mac Pro with 32GB RAM, 6TB w/3.5 7200 rpm Master and OWC PCI boot drive. Also use OWC 32TB RAID external drives (16TB Raid 10x2) for files and a Lacie 12TB external for redundancy of mainly Photo Library and image folders. The OWC externals are plenty fast and seem to write at around 10GB/minute.

 

Any input on the benefit of an upgrade? Right now I see my only bottleneck being the Master which is not solid state so each time I access data on the drives I must wait for them to spool up assuming they have been idle for some time.

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I am reluctant to wait with technology if I have a need, but you may want to wait on this one. Apple is apparently going to update the Mac mini shortly. Five months ago I couldn't wait any longer, so I went with the garbage can. In terms of performance, I haven't noticed much of a difference from my Mac mini when it comes to photo editing. Ingesting photos seems faster, but I started using photo mechanic. From a practical standpoint, the best thing about it is the space for more plugs, but to a certain extent the benefit comes if you are using thunderbolt.

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I also use a Mac Mini for my photography. Prior to that I had a MacPro from around 2008, I think also a 5.1. The main reason I switched was due to space, but it's worth noting that my 500€ Mac Mini is as fast, if not faster, than my 5 year old Pro. Computers will always get faster, and there will always be a faster option available within months of you buying. But my opinion on the new Pro is it is great for videographers, but a false economy for photographers - so much power is not needed for what I do, at least.

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I also use a Mac Mini for my photography. Prior to that I had a MacPro from around 2008, I think also a 5.1. The main reason I switched was due to space, but it's worth noting that my 500€ Mac Mini is as fast, if not faster, than my 5 year old Pro. Computers will always get faster, and there will always be a faster option available within months of you buying. But my opinion on the new Pro is it is great for videographers, but a false economy for photographers - so much power is not needed for what I do, at least.

 

 

Not in my opinion. MacPro from 2010 is faster than my retina 15".

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Anything works if it has a decent processor and 4 GB ram AND YOU HAVE NOT OVERLOADED THE MAIN DRIVE WITH FILES. Overloaded HD forces computations to be written to and retrieved from RAM which is time consuming. Having unused ram or excessive ram is of no value.

 

 

 

Assign a decent amount of HD space to photoshop. There is an option in preferences.

 

30% is my limit.

 

When working a project, retrieve the whole folder at one time to HD, then return it. Save over old one.

 

I bought a Mac Pro because it has 4 internal bays for HD and no external drives are required. It has 4 GB and runs no slower than the older Imac that has 16.

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What do you actually do with all that? Could it be that you are the bottleneck in overall system performance ;-)

 

You could replace the spinning disk with (several) Samsung 850 1GB SSD's in a RAID 0 configuration and have a very very fast disk system for under 1000 dollars. Might need/want a RAID controller to get the most out of that.

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I have the new Mac Pro 6.1, maxed out with ECC RAM and Flash Storage, D700s.

 

Mac Pro "Six Core" 3.5 (Late 2013) Specs (Late 2013, MD878LL/A, MacPro6,1, A1481, 2630) @ EveryMac.com

 

Have hooked up Crucial M550 SSDs and eSATA RAID enclosures via Thunderbolt to eSATA adapters.

Work happens on the SSDs, hard drives are used for permanent storage and backups.

 

Works great for me.

Edited by k-hawinkler
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I also use a Mac Mini for my photography. Prior to that I had a MacPro from around 2008, I think also a 5.1. The main reason I switched was due to space, but it's worth noting that my 500€ Mac Mini is as fast, if not faster, than my 5 year old Pro. Computers will always get faster, and there will always be a faster option available within months of you buying. But my opinion on the new Pro is it is great for videographers, but a false economy for photographers - so much power is not needed for what I do, at least.

 

Mine is a mid-2010 Mac Pro-says 5.1. It has 3.33 GHz 6-core Xenon using 1333 Mhz DDR3 RAM. I also use ESATA external RAIDs.

Edited by algrove
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Mine is a mid-2010 Mac Pro-says 5.1. It has 3.33 GHz 6-core Xenon using 1333 Mhz DDR3 RAM.

 

I upgraded from a more than 9 year old dual G5 PPC and am still using the now 10 year old 30" Apple Cinema Display.

 

If I had your machine I would max our RAM and add an SSD for booting from and

several SSDs in a RAID configuration for working the images.

Disk drives should only be used for permanent storage and backups.

My external disk drives get only powered on when needed.

Edited by k-hawinkler
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I upgraded from a more than 9 year old dual G5 PPC and am still using the now 10 year old 30" Apple Cinema Display.

 

If I had your machine I would max our RAM and add an SSD for booting from and several SSDs for working the images. Disk drives only for storage and backups.

 

K-H

That's exactly what I just might do is get SSD's for working images (master). I have the OWC PCI card for boot and my externals are fast so the only bottleneck might be the 7200 drives used as Master. As suggested I have removed as much as possible from boot except for applications, However, it would not allow me to take documents off it for some reason.

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As it happens, I was ready to upgrade just as the black-can Mac Pro was announced. After reading the specs, I quick-like-a-bunny bought the last of the aluminum-tower Mac Pros available.

 

Reasons? I want massive onboard storage, with redundancy. I have one program with 80 gigabytes of data that HAVE to be on the mother disk, not on externals, to run correctly. If my startup disk fails, I need to be able to switch to another on-board drive (with backups of the OS and programs, as well as data, as a bootable drive) in a few minutes. Ideally I will soon have 4 x 4 terabytes of storage on board.

 

The black-can seems aimed at multi-machine environments with the data mostly stored on servers and/or "the Cloud." Which may be the future - but it is not my future.

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Andy,

 

Aren't you simply saying that your one program with data needs to reside on your boot drive?

And for redundancy you also have a clone of your boot drive on another bootable drive?

If so, that can be easily accomplished with the nMP of late 2013.

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Andy

 

I also heard of many photo pros doing what you did and seem to be happy with their choices. With my OWC PCI boot drive being fast and also having a boot in reserve why not stick with it for a while.

 

Since I am just an amateur, I can easily get along with what I have until computer GAS hits me hard and over the head.

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I upgraded to the garbage can (6-core, 32G Ram, 1T Flash Drive etc). Previously I was using a 15" 2010 MacPro Laptop. Boot-up times and image load times are seriously faster ... processing images is faster too but the improvement has not been quite as impressive as I was anticipating. Connectivity is very impressive ... a complete backup via Thunderbolt to an a array of various external drives is so crazy quick - always amazes me!

 

What I didn't appreciate before I bought it was that much of the photo editing software (NIC + Photoshop + Aperture in my case) needed updates before they could start to use some of the extra potential of the garbage can. In fact, now that Aperture has been officially ditched by Apple in favour of the new 'Photos' application ... it will be interesting to see how things develop over the next few months. Apparently Apple have completely re-written the image processing engine 'from the ground up' so that it can make full use of the new hardware when Yosemite is released. Hope this is the case and that the 'Photos' application, in time, has enough 'pro' functionality to replace Aperture. NIC (google) have also stated that they are planning to re-compile their software to exploit the improvements in Apples new image engine.

 

So ... that's a long way of saying; I think the garbage can is great for what I use it for (handling lots of photos and some video) BUT I'm hoping that it will get even better when all of the software starts to catch up.

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Anything works if it has a decent processor and 4 GB ram AND YOU HAVE NOT OVERLOADED THE MAIN DRIVE WITH FILES. Overloaded HD forces computations to be written to and retrieved from RAM which is time consuming. Having unused ram or excessive ram is of no value.

 

I disagree entirely regarding the files. I think there is confusion here regarding disc and RAM. The key to performance of RAM throughput is generous, fast on-board caches and generally every generation is better than its predecessor. Photoshop uses its own cache metaphor they call tiling. It is important, but not the same as on-board caching.

 

Assign a decent amount of HD space to photoshop. There is an option in preferences.

 

30% is my limit.

 

If you are referring to the performance preferences, that 30% is not HD space. Percentage is shown only in RAM allocation allowance. Photoshop does a good job of recommending the default percentage of RAM. 30% is too little unless you are running several large applications simultaneously. It is a bad idea to allocate too little RAM. 30% of 4gb is too little.

 

Photoshop HD space (scratch space) is measured/displayed in absolute space. If your scratch disc is too small, you might force disc IO which is slow. HD scratch space is best across multiple spindles other than the main disc.

Edited by pico
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