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Advice on upgrades (Mac Pro 4,1)

wonderspark said:
Not looking to start fights with you guys.

I still have the 640GB HDD that came with my Mac in use, and it's cloned to a 1TB external (somewhat wasteful, but it's the smallest thing I have.) I'm currently only using 300GB of that 640GB, so I'd need at least a 512GB SSD, and I just don't think it's worth $700.
Click to expand...

What is the 300GB made up of?

I had a 80GB X25-M at the start, with just boot and apps on, before buying a 160GB X25-M and moving my LR library and previews onto it (previews load almost instant now if you jump from album to album!) and the 80GB went into my MBP.

Now the 160GB is in my MBP and I have a 300GB Intel 320 in the MP to take hold of my main documents folder. Any big files that I don't access regularly, and my music library are on my 1TB WD Black.

Given you can pickup a 80GB SSD for $115 (http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-X25-M...86247454?pt=Laptops_Nov05&hash=item3a69fc541e)

Why not give it a try for boot and apps, eh? ;)
 
Hello,

Imagine a discussion between a top F1 driver and his engineer:
"Hey, driver! Guess what: we modified your car and added a huge performance increase!"
"Really? Wow!" he'd reply, "That sounds great! What did you do?"
"That's the best part," the engineer would say, a huge grin on his face, "starting the car will now take you 1 second instead of 5!"
"That's nice, sort of..." the driver would reply, a bit disappointed. "And after that, what about when I'm racing?"
"Er, well..." the red-faced engineer would be forced to admit, "er, well, nothing would be different."

Who's willing to bet that the engineer would be fired?

Why would anyone say that a SSD helps significantly with PhotoShop, and then not take the time to prove it.

What kind of crazy people care about boot time and app launch time on a Mac Pro that is used in a professional environment? A Mac Pro that is always on, on which the main apps are constantly opened?

Tallchris: would your boss really be impressed if you told him that the machines booted faster, but that it didn't help you be more productive?

Loa
 
Concorde Rules said:
What is the 300GB made up of?

I had a 80GB X25-M at the start, with just boot and apps on, before buying a 160GB X25-M and moving my LR library and previews onto it (previews load almost instant now if you jump from album to album!) and the 80GB went into my MBP.

Now the 160GB is in my MBP and I have a 300GB Intel 320 in the MP to take hold of my main documents folder. Any big files that I don't access regularly, and my music library are on my 1TB WD Black.

Given you can pickup a 80GB SSD for $115 (http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-X25-M...86247454?pt=Laptops_Nov05&hash=item3a69fc541e)

Why not give it a try for boot and apps, eh? ;)
Click to expand...
102GB is stuff I really need to keep on the boot drive, like Apps, System, Library folders and useful parts of Users folder. Leaving 10% space would make a 120GB SSD a little too tight for my taste, so I'd have to go minimum of 160GB. Found an Intel 320 160GB for $200. It's worth consideration. :)
 
wonderspark said:
It looks like CrystalDiskMark is Windows only, and I don't have it installed. :(

I agree 4k uncached random read/write will be faster on SSD, but one could simply create a RAMdisk and get results like this, which I ran 60 seconds ago:

Results 2940.01
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.6.8 (10K549)
Physical RAM 32768 MB
Model MacPro5,1
Drive Type Apple read/write
Disk Test 2940.01
Sequential 1783.91
Uncached Write 1354.97 831.93 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 3963.84 2242.74 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 932.47 272.89 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 5570.04 2799.46 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 8353.94
Uncached Write 3676.99 389.25 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 8707.73 2787.67 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 36320.13 257.38 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 15508.54 2877.72 MB/sec [256K blocks]

1.78GB RAMdisk such as this makes a nice scratch disk for Photoshop and the like.

That said, when a 500GB or so SSD can be had for about $300, I'll buy one.
Click to expand...

Awesome. Too bad you can't run your OS off it.
 
wonderspark said:
I don't need to, though.
Click to expand...

Than what's the point of the RAMdisk bench? PS boost? I don't use PS, hardly ever.

----------
Loa said:
Hello,

Imagine a discussion between a top F1 driver and his engineer:
"Hey, driver! Guess what: we modified your car and added a huge performance increase!"
"Really? Wow!" he'd reply, "That sounds great! What did you do?"
"That's the best part," the engineer would say, a huge grin on his face, "starting the car will now take you 1 second instead of 5!"
"That's nice, sort of..." the driver would reply, a bit disappointed. "And after that, what about when I'm racing?"
"Er, well..." the red-faced engineer would be forced to admit, "er, well, nothing would be different."

Who's willing to bet that the engineer would be fired?
Click to expand...

Terrible analogy. Is it possibly French translator that keeps your comments so backhanded? Anyway...
It has been proven by "The World" that SSD's are leagues faster. Not sure how anyone is even arguing against. It isn't just boot that things are faster I know you know that. The luddites are really loving that HDD cache. 64MB is nothing. 8GB is nothing.
Loa said:
What kind of crazy people care about boot time and app launch time on a Mac Pro that is used in a professional environment? A Mac Pro that is always on, on which the main apps are constantly opened?
Click to expand...
You are assuming and my professional environment is all about IT dude. I'm not some creative wanker all Apple'd out with my Adobe suite and that's all I need to inflict my commercialism on the world.
You are the users I roll eyes at as it takes me 10 minutes to recoup and close down (eg. Force Quit) all the apps open for 20 days left idling because I have routines to run.
 
Last edited:
The point was that RAM is a better investment than an SSD. Since you don't use Photoshop, you might not know that it and programs like it load data into "scratch disks", and when you point that data to a fast area like a RAMdisk, operations are performed much faster. Some use SSDs for scratch, but if you have the RAM to spare, it's even faster still.

I don't leave anything open for 20 days, incidentally. I go a day, maybe two before shutting down for a while, and while it takes a minute to boot up the next day, it's ok, because I can fill my glass with water and get my notepad ready in the nick of time for the login screen.
 
wonderspark said:
The point was that RAM is a better investment than an SSD. Since you don't use Photoshop, you might not know that it and programs like it load data into "scratch disks", and when you point that data to a fast area like a RAMdisk, operations are performed much faster. Some use SSDs for scratch, but if you have the RAM to spare, it's even faster still.

I don't leave anything open for 20 days, incidentally. I go a day, maybe two before shutting down for a while, and while it takes a minute to boot up the next day, it's ok, because I can fill my glass with water and get my notepad ready in the nick of time for the login screen.
Click to expand...

Dude I support 100's of PS users. I think I know PS pretty well. I just don't USE it for work. I just make sure it works and is optimized. I know exactly what and how a RAM/ scratch disk woks and performs it is just somewhat useless for anything outside PS.
 
derbothaus said:
Dude I support 100's of PS users. I think I know PS pretty well. I just don't USE it for work. I just make sure it works and is optimized. I know exactly what and how a RAM/ scratch disk woks and performs it is just somewhat useless for anything outside PS.
Click to expand...
Cool, so we're on the same page!
 
wonderspark said:
Cool, so we're on the same page!
Click to expand...

Yes.
I agree that if it does not make sense financially with little benefit to current workflow there would be less enticement for an SSD. But comments (not directed at anyone, really) mentioning very little general benefit are just flat wrong and have to be based in bias or hatred because of price and I see zero instances where a single HDD even comes close to an SSD in anything. I know of no-one that opens their apps once and just deals with OS X's miserable memory management, it's miserable!
 
wonderspark said:
102GB is stuff I really need to keep on the boot drive, like Apps, System, Library folders and useful parts of Users folder. Leaving 10% space would make a 120GB SSD a little too tight for my taste, so I'd have to go minimum of 160GB. Found an Intel 320 160GB for $200. It's worth consideration. :)
Click to expand...

Definitely.

I've had 2x80GB, 1x160GB and now a 320 300GB. All great little drives. :D
 
Hello,

Time to stop debating, and get some numbers on the table for PS (as it is one of the OP's main apps).

I've done the test on my SSD, and seen no significant improvement in PS performance.

I'm still waiting to see someone else's results in PS. Not boot time, nor app launch time, nor general snappyness: all those are very real and I've seen them on my Mac Pro.

Show me how much faster a SSD can make PS and I'll do it: I use it all the time.

Loa
 
Well it seems I've started quite the debate here lol.

I think I'll just to for the RAM to start with and if the designer still feels it's too slow think about the other options.

I haven't really come into the mac pro section before, might have to come here for often you guys know your stuff!
 
Yes you have:)
Allow me to also apologize if my earlier tone was a bit snippy with anyone. Frustrated easily today for some reason.
Also I don't really run too much PS so I care not the tests or results. I have always found Adobe's speed issues to be Adobe's problem not the hardware. So accuracy is still not there. As a baseline sure, it's all you can do.
 
wonderspark said:
That said, when a 500GB or so SSD can be had for about $300, I'll buy one.
Click to expand...

I have basically the same set up as you at my work computer (3x3TB in a RAID0 that hits the same 330 MB/sec read & write), and I couldn't be happier. Today, if a 500 GB SSD was $300, maybe we'd have 2 of them in RAID0, and 2x3 TB HD for data storage. But by the time 500GB SSD are $300, HDD might be $100 for 3 TB. And also by that time, I'm probably going to need even more than 12 TBs anyway, so we'll see what happens.
 
I would~
1) At least quadruple your RAM to 12GB;
2) Upgrade to an SSD as your boot volume, or if you have the budget for it two or more SSDs;
3) Upgrade the processor to the 6-core;
4) Upgrade your video card to something a bit more powerful, if you need more performance.

That's the order of upgrades I would perform.

wonderspark said:
1.78GB RAMdisk such as this makes a nice scratch disk for Photoshop and the like.
Click to expand...

What's the point of making a RAM disk and using it as scratch for Photoshop? Just allocate more RAM to Photoshop instead; it would be the same result. The only way I can see to improve performance is to increase the amount of RAM I have.
 
wallysb01 said:
I have basically the same set up as you at my work computer (3x3TB in a RAID0 that hits the same 330 MB/sec read & write), and I couldn't be happier. Today, if a 500 GB SSD was $300, maybe we'd have 2 of them in RAID0, and 2x3 TB HD for data storage. But by the time 500GB SSD are $300, HDD might be $100 for 3 TB. And also by that time, I'm probably going to need even more than 12 TBs anyway, so we'll see what happens.
Click to expand...

Your running 3x3TB in RAID 0????

Wow. I assume that is all backed up?
 
Concorde Rules said:
How much of that data is critical for RAID 0?

Just looking at prices here, to do the same thing I'd have to spend more than buying a 500GB SSD would, and the SSD would be faster :eek:
Click to expand...

A lot of it. Probably in the 3 TB range at any one time. The rest is data storage and archival stuff that needs to be used off and on, and could be transferred to the RAID when needed. I'm not sure if I mentioned this here, but what I deal with often creates very large amounts of temp files, like 100's of GBs. Which means right now, I could run a few at a time. If I was dealing with a 500 GB or even 1 TB (i.e. 2 500 GB SSD in RAID0), I'd barely be able to fit the raw data and tmp files for just one run on the drive. Which might be ok, and make all the data transfer between storage drives and RAID0 worth it, if the speed was significantly fast and if the CPUs could actually feed it that well. But at that point, a single SSD and a 3 drive 7200 RPM RAID0 is not much of a speed difference. And the 9 TB of storage just lets me not have to think about it. Which is worth a lot, because I have enough stuff to do.

And I do still need some serious data storage. So its not like the choices are really between 3 3TB drives and just 1 500 GB SSD, its more like 3 3TB vs 2x500 GB SSD and maybe 2 3 TB drives (excluding back up solutions and a boot drive, which would be the same in both cases).
 
alphaod said:
What's the point of making a RAM disk and using it as scratch for Photoshop? Just allocate more RAM to Photoshop instead; it would be the same result. The only way I can see to improve performance is to increase the amount of RAM I have.
Click to expand...
I tried it out, and was impressed by how fast it runs that way. I don't know what else I can say about that. You'll never know unless you try it yourself, I guess.

I'll make it easy for you. If you copy this and paste it into Terminal, it will build you a RAMdisk 1.78GB in size, called Scratch:

diskutil erasevolume HFS+ "Scratch" `hdiutil attach -nomount ram://3496290`

After that, you can launch Photoshop and point to it for scratch, and decide if it's worth it or not. I have this little script saved in a text file for easy use after a reboot.

Peace, brothers and sisters. :)
 
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