d300 and d500?

[Emoo]

I'm about to start graduate school, working on my mfa. It's pretty animation heavy (primarily in maya), and I also do a lot of photoshop and after effects work on my own time. I currently have a 2010 mbp.

Can anyone explain to me whether upgrading to the d500 is going to be significantly better in the long run? I'm looking at getting the 6 core right now.

 

[VirtualRain]

I'm about to start graduate school, working on my mfa. It's pretty animation heavy (primarily in maya), and I also do a lot of photoshop and after effects work on my own time. I currently have a 2010 mbp.

Can anyone explain to me whether upgrading to the d500 is going to be significantly better in the long run? I'm looking at getting the 6 core right now.

Despite having bought the D500s myself, I haven't seen many benchmarks that show much of a difference between the D300s and D500s. Hopefully someone working in Maya or AE can comment further. IMHO, in the short-term, you'd not be left wanting with the D300s. Long term, the D700s are probably the most future-proof but for a few-hundred bucks, it's not difficult to justify the D500s for a bit of insurance for the future. I guess in the end, my advice is not all that helpful.

 

[deconstruct60]

....... working on my mfa. It's pretty animation heavy (primarily in maya), and I also do a lot of photoshop and after effects work on my own time.

Can anyone explain to me whether upgrading to the d500 is going to be significantly better in the long run? I'm looking at getting the 6 core right now.

Photoshop is probably a wash between the two.

Maya while The W7000 and W8000 are technically not the D300 and D500 the gaps probably are probably simpler. ( both D300 and D500 are clocked down and a bit under VRAM versus the Wx000 series offerings).

In the Maya tests here the gap grows/shrinks on "what" the image demands:
http://www.cgchannel.com/2013/11/group-test-amd-and-nvidia-professional-gpus-2013/

probably more so lack of optimization here than anything else. (i.e., on unoptimized code probably won't make much of a difference)
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-workstation-graphics-card,3493-8.html

Not normalized on CPU cores, but at least D300 versus D500 here:
http://www.barefeats.com/tube04.html

If Maya usage would tip toward max computation and/or greater than or equal to 2GB VRAM usage then probably will see a gap. As long as data fits well within 2GB VRAM and not max computational stress the cards will be similar.

The D500 isn't going to "future proof" the Mac Pro. If this is debate of short term debt versus "long run" benefits then it is probably isn't a good long range bet. If D500 is busting the budget then, no. Likewise D500 and skimping on other short term needs (back-ups , software , storage, etc).

Future versions of the software may increase the gap. That is the only aspect of "future proof" should be looking for. If going to squat on current software version for long term there probably isn't much upside there either.

 

[Emoo]

As far as the "long term," I mean mostly that I'd like it to run me about three years.

Thanks for your input on the usage for Photoshop, and also the note that y'all haven't seen much of a difference in use between the 300 and the 500. I have access to more powerful workstations and a render farm, but I want to be able to do some of my rendering at home so I don't have to be at the lab 24/7.

 

[Yebubbleman]

If you have access to more powerful workstations/a render farm and just want this computer to last you three years (which is short for a Mac Pro, let alone a 27" iMac or a 15" MacBook Pro), the D300 will probably be adequate. Then again, if you can spend the extra on a D500, why not? Those kind of expenditures directly correlate to the longevity of the machine. I'd say Mac Pros past a 6-core and past the D500s are sort of much for individual users and make much more sense for businesses in those industries.

 

[Emoo]

Right, and I'd love for it to continue on being my workhorse past grad school, which it ought to be. I just need it to last through grad school at minimum. My 2010 macbook pro is still going strong, just not fast enough for the projects I'm trying to work on.

The d500s add about 300 to the price, so I'm thinking about doing it anyway, since I'm already spending such an amount, but I just wanted to get some insight on whether I'm likely to see any huge differences from folks who do the same sort of thing as I'm going to with this machine.

 

[airdrop]

Hey Hey!

I just want to share my experience.
My new machine with D700 on board arrived last week (Quad-Core, 64GB), so I started testing it with Photoshop / After Effects / Lightroom / Pixelmator / basically every power hungry software - which I using on a daily bases at work on my "corporate machine" (also new mac pro, but only differences are 32GB, D300) ...

My work D300 machine feels same fast as my D700 one, only difference I see is on paper (graphs, benchmarks, naming, etc.), so basically if I could choose again, I would go for D300.

Also comparing to my second machine - iMac 27 (fully loaded, latest version), I feel difference, probably thanks to PCIe-based flash storage in MacPro, which feels faster overall.

In real word scenarios the difference not exist (you don't feel it).
Of course my workflow is different than others, so this statement works only for my case