Rokem said:
Well I'm not going to argue the point with you because you're using unsubstantiated claims. I gave you a benchmark done in a controlled manner and you're argument is "well it's not real world."
Nothing I can do about that.
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Graphics cards and Photoshop.
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Well I'm not going to argue the point with you because you're using unsubstantiated claims. I gave you a benchmark done in a controlled manner and you're argument is "well it's not real world."
Nothing I can do about that.
OK,
I'm going to throw a bit more confiusion in here for andy... Get the ATI card! Don't look at it as if it's a gaming card, it's more than that. It's only a $250 upgrade and is the best performing card in all aspects, even for 2D functions, of all the current choices with the exception of the overpriced FX4500 -- which only has advantages for specialized 3D functions.
The X1900XT is the best bang for the buck right now on the Mac Pro and will accelerate lots of Quartz functions as people have stated. It will really show a huge advantage over the 7300GT offerings with Core Animation functions coming up in Leopard (OS X 10.5).
OK, enough on that... As for the Photoshop benchmarks and have to side with iGary. Those benchmarks are pretty close to correct from what I've seen in "real world" use. In fact, with many operations and especially if you have to resort to 3rd-party plug-ins, my G5 quads are definitely faster than a Mac Pro.
OTOH, the Mac Pro is still blisteringly fast considering Photoshop is running via Rosetta. I can hardly wait until we have proper universal binaries for Photoshop. Especially if CS3 is properly multithreaded to take advantage of all these CPU cores. It's going to scream....
I'm going to throw a bit more confiusion in here for andy... Get the ATI card! Don't look at it as if it's a gaming card, it's more than that. It's only a $250 upgrade and is the best performing card in all aspects, even for 2D functions, of all the current choices with the exception of the overpriced FX4500 -- which only has advantages for specialized 3D functions.
The X1900XT is the best bang for the buck right now on the Mac Pro and will accelerate lots of Quartz functions as people have stated. It will really show a huge advantage over the 7300GT offerings with Core Animation functions coming up in Leopard (OS X 10.5).
OK, enough on that... As for the Photoshop benchmarks and have to side with iGary. Those benchmarks are pretty close to correct from what I've seen in "real world" use. In fact, with many operations and especially if you have to resort to 3rd-party plug-ins, my G5 quads are definitely faster than a Mac Pro.
OTOH, the Mac Pro is still blisteringly fast considering Photoshop is running via Rosetta. I can hardly wait until we have proper universal binaries for Photoshop. Especially if CS3 is properly multithreaded to take advantage of all these CPU cores. It's going to scream....
iGary said:
ok im sorry, looks like i was dead wrong on this one.
The reason i threw out that benchmark, and have thrown out most other benchmarks before, and probly still will is that, some are garbage and its hard to tell whichones are good and which are bad.
and the
was refering to you not want to argue with me, or all the links and .mac link are broken and will stay like that.
Rokem said:
I'll post a new setup pic when we get moved. The house looks like soomeone blew it up right now.
iGary said:I'll post a new setup pic when we get moved. The house looks like soomeone blew it up right now.
send me pm when its posted please. I don't know why but i have always wanted to see your setup and have never gotten to..anyways, get the ati. It will future proof your computer, and who knows cs3 might have everything done on the gpu and take advantage of 16gb memory, and 8 cores. Also jag. will be completly 3d enviroment and will love the extra horse power. Its what 200$ more and is a key component in the system.
In "Real world" situations, I'm betting the quad g5 is much faster in photoshop than the mac pro with equal amounts of ram. I'm running a quad mac pro at work (2.6ghz w/ 3 gigs ram) and I bring photoshop to a crawl working with web graphics (72dpi) and a ton of layers. It's about as fast as my old dual 1.8ghz g5 in that sense.
Some people seem to think their mac pros are sprinkled with magic fairy dust to run photoshop in emulation faster than a speedy native machine. Sure opening photoshop and applying filters to an image is going to be fast. But that's not really "real world" situations for most professionals. Working with files that are 300+ mb when opened with over 100 layers is more "real world" and Photoshop running under Rosetta seems to take a big hit then. It's still impressive nonetheless.
Some people seem to think their mac pros are sprinkled with magic fairy dust to run photoshop in emulation faster than a speedy native machine. Sure opening photoshop and applying filters to an image is going to be fast. But that's not really "real world" situations for most professionals. Working with files that are 300+ mb when opened with over 100 layers is more "real world" and Photoshop running under Rosetta seems to take a big hit then. It's still impressive nonetheless.
andyjamesnelson said:**** i have no idea if i should get the ati card or not
Just do it. If you regret spending $240 more, then you have no business buying a Mac Pro. If you don't buy it, then you'll always have that nagging voice in the back of your head saying "you should've upgraded the video card, you cheap bastard." LOL... Seriously, upgrading to the ATI card the only thing you have to lose is the $240 or whatever upgrade price and a whole lot to gain (faster overall video performance - 2D and especially 3D), 2 x dual-link DVI ports on the same card, better resale value for the system if the need comes up, etc...
And check out Memorytogo.com for Mac Pro RAM. It's cheaper than Crucial (2x2GB 4GB kit is $760 last I checked). I don't personally have any experience with their Mac Pro memory, but I haven't heard any complaints yet from those who have bought it and posted about it online. Give it another month or so and FB-DIMMs with proper heat spreaders will be more common and available from vendors like newegg for great prices. If you want to hold out for better RAM prices and can live with 2GB for now, the 4x512 config is only a $300 upgrade through Apple and that's actually not a bad price to add that second gig of RAM with no brain-damage on your part. Prices on their 1GB modules are too high and their prices on 2GB modules are downright criminal compared to Crucial, memorytogo and others who have Apple approved RAM. ...But I think we're all used to that from Apple anyway.
Ok I think some of the people here are right. I will go for the better Ati card.
Here are the reasons I think its a good idea:
I think that probably PS and Final Cut will benifit from more GPU power.
I may start using motion and I hear that this application benifits a real lot from a better card.
I do from time to time play new games which are all 3D and totally run better on faster cards and its so much more fun to play games when there running at full spec. Plus your freinds can come over and marvel at you machine :
I dont realy know what this Core animation thing is but from having a quick look on the Apple site it sounds like it will use a lot of GPU and I would love to be running the OS at full speed.
So it sounds like it makes sense. I guess there is also more life in a better card. And its cool that I could run two monitors from it.
I'm going with the better card. Jesus this mac gets more and more expensive. And to think i was maybe going to get a 24inch imac! HAH. I dont i ever really was going to. I think there was just this tinny voice in my head saying spend less or something and I would love a 24inch HD screen but its nothing agaisnt the power of the Mac pro. andy
Here are the reasons I think its a good idea:
I think that probably PS and Final Cut will benifit from more GPU power.
I may start using motion and I hear that this application benifits a real lot from a better card.
I do from time to time play new games which are all 3D and totally run better on faster cards and its so much more fun to play games when there running at full spec. Plus your freinds can come over and marvel at you machine :
I dont realy know what this Core animation thing is but from having a quick look on the Apple site it sounds like it will use a lot of GPU and I would love to be running the OS at full speed.
So it sounds like it makes sense. I guess there is also more life in a better card. And its cool that I could run two monitors from it.
I'm going with the better card. Jesus this mac gets more and more expensive. And to think i was maybe going to get a 24inch imac! HAH. I dont i ever really was going to. I think there was just this tinny voice in my head saying spend less or something and I would love a 24inch HD screen but its nothing agaisnt the power of the Mac pro. andy
andyjamesnelson said:
PS and Final Cut don't benefit -- they don't currently offload any functions to a GPU. Actually, 3D transition effects in FC are powered by Quartz / OpenGL, so there is benefit to previews and speed bumps in the editing process. You won't see any speed-ups for actual rendering.
Motion will benefit some...
Yep, I think you're headed on the right track... Although, that 24" iMac is a sexy beast if it still fits your needs. If you get one of those, be sure to get the 7600 GT video upgrade... It's not near as fast as the X1900XT card in the Mac Pro, but nearly twice as powerful as the stock 7300 GT.
The BTO X1900 option is a veritable bargain.
When I got my powermac G5 I had no need for the top GFX card at the time, but within a year applications like motion came out. I had to pay 599 ($700+) for my Radeon X800 XT from the Apple Store afterwards. A ridiculous price.
Even if you dont plant on doing heavy 3d accelerated applications straight away, things can change.
Photoshop WILL NOT improve because of the graphics card.
Final Cut WILL benefit for REAL TIME previews as it will be able to take advantage of RT Extreme to a much higher degree than with the stock card.
Go for it, you wont regret buying it and at the end of the day your spending $2500+ on a computer, whats $240 for the upgrade now ?
When I got my powermac G5 I had no need for the top GFX card at the time, but within a year applications like motion came out. I had to pay 599 ($700+) for my Radeon X800 XT from the Apple Store afterwards. A ridiculous price.
Even if you dont plant on doing heavy 3d accelerated applications straight away, things can change.
Photoshop WILL NOT improve because of the graphics card.
Final Cut WILL benefit for REAL TIME previews as it will be able to take advantage of RT Extreme to a much higher degree than with the stock card.
Go for it, you wont regret buying it and at the end of the day your spending $2500+ on a computer, whats $240 for the upgrade now ?
Photoshop is faster on the g5 quad, wait for the universal and be amazed. Under xp2 on my mac pro it is faster than a quad with 5gb of ram. Nothing you can do in photoshop will in anyway tax any of the 3d cards available for a mac pro.
In the same way nothing in FCP will really require something like a quadro4500. The only time you are going to see any difference is when you use something highly openGL dependant like Shake, Cinema 4d or Lightwave. Maya isn't UB yet so forget about it. The x1900 does not support all the openGL enhancements of AE 7 but the quadro does.
The next wave of apple pro apps will most likely follow the 'Motion' path and offer GPU based acceleration for certain features. In this case then a better 3d card will make a difference. If you seriously need performance then again it's the quadro you should be looking at and not the x1900. The ati card is a lot faster in games and certain folks are suggesting it outperforms the Quadro on some apps ! But given the state of drivers I will beleive it when I see it.
That said I am buying an x1900 becasue they are so cheap and I want a speed boost using 3d apps in windows XP and games.
In the same way nothing in FCP will really require something like a quadro4500. The only time you are going to see any difference is when you use something highly openGL dependant like Shake, Cinema 4d or Lightwave. Maya isn't UB yet so forget about it. The x1900 does not support all the openGL enhancements of AE 7 but the quadro does.
The next wave of apple pro apps will most likely follow the 'Motion' path and offer GPU based acceleration for certain features. In this case then a better 3d card will make a difference. If you seriously need performance then again it's the quadro you should be looking at and not the x1900. The ati card is a lot faster in games and certain folks are suggesting it outperforms the Quadro on some apps ! But given the state of drivers I will beleive it when I see it.
That said I am buying an x1900 becasue they are so cheap and I want a speed boost using 3d apps in windows XP and games.
technicolor said:
Not sure what you mean here...you are saying that from when you first hit the photoshop icon in the dock, in one bounce the program is up and running and ready to use? HIGHLY doubt that. Or do you mean it gets to the opening credit load screen really fast once you hit the icon? I have a 2.66 pro and it gets to that credit screen fast, but you then have to wait (not long) until the program is set up and ready to use...