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Mac Pro + 27 LED Cinema

A

AMDGAMER

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 4, 2011
270
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This just seems like a GREAT setup. I have been looking at a mac mini + 27 thunderbolt display, but I have been also checking out this setup.

Questions:

is the base model enough for apps such as final cut, photoshop, and a few others?

3GB is nothing for a sytem that expensive, how much is additional ram thats certified to work? Where would you buy it?

I want to buy at apple store, so I would likely walk in and take one off the shelf. Am I going to be pleased with the speed of the xeon processor vs my AMD Phenom II in my AW desktop?

Interesting all apple stores around here are showing "available feb 16" for in store pickup..looks like they have to order it.


Also I know a new one is due out or may never come out, but my needs aren't that extensive, I'd just like an apple desktop since I've never owned one, and the laptop I already have an AIR from last year.

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ah maybe im better off with the mac mini and thunderbolt display for my needs. almost seems like it could be a faster machine
 
Just get a top notch iMac with the lowest possible RAM.

Get the RAM online, 16GB is $100~ now.

The base Mac Mini should be enough for Photoshop and FCP, but remember, you might be jumping to After Effects etc...and AE is a hog.

The 27" display is $1,000. Mac Mini base is $600. Just add $500 more and get the iMac with the fastest processor. You can get a student discount if you have a friend who's still a student, etc.
 
Does the LED Cinema isight and speakers work fine with a new Mac Pro?
 
AMDGAMER said:
This just seems like a GREAT setup. I have been looking at a mac mini + 27 thunderbolt display, but I have been also checking out this setup.

Questions:

is the base model enough for apps such as final cut, photoshop, and a few others?

3GB is nothing for a sytem that expensive, how much is additional ram thats certified to work? Where would you buy it?
Click to expand...

I agree with you on the ram. I'd never buy a display from Apple (they break, age poorly, drift worse than many, etc.). We're at a point with technology where with a lot of these apps, it doesn't matter what app, but how you use it. I could do a lot on either of those apps on a base mini, but opening high res layered .exr files would suck. It just depends how you use the application. The mini doesn't have any decent gpu options. The mini server has a reasonably fast cpu, but it's $1000 with integrated graphics and without a keyboard and mouse. Anyway I have no way of knowing how hard you're running these applications, and that was my point.
 
A 2.66GHz Xeon Nahalem Quad is about 5-15% faster than a 3.2GHz Phenom II X4. You'll be faster than that and your AMD PC with a 2.8GHz base Mac Pro 2010 and even faster as the clocks and cores progress.
 
I have had no issues what so ever with my Apple 27" Cinema Display since I bought it well over a year ago.

"they break, age poorly, drift worse than many, etc." - citation needed.
 
AMDGAMER said:
[/COLOR]ah maybe im better off with the mac mini and thunderbolt display for my needs. almost seems like it could be a faster machine
Click to expand...

Are you serious in the above thought, or are you fishing for responses?

I am in the process of making a purchase decision for an another Apple desk top, I have owned a few over the last 8 - 10 years and cannot imagine where you are coming from?

I have owned Power Mac's, iMac's, and in the past a Mac Pro ...... but never a Mac Mini though I could see a use for one as replacement for my aging Apple TV.
 
AMDGAMER said:
Does the LED Cinema isight and speakers work fine with a new Mac Pro?
Click to expand...

I work on a Mac Pro + LED Cinema Display. The display is great, it's really bright and the color accuracy has been sufficient for video editing (no broadcast/television). IF you're coming from an AMD Phenom I would try to get the 6-core at 3.33GHz, that will provide a better jump in performance than the base model. As others have said, get as much RAM as you can (16GB or more ideally). I love my setup and have invested many hours working on it. The display is great, I haven't experienced any problems with it. I've also travelled hundreds of miles on numerous trips by car boxing and unboxing both my MP and Display and bringing them with me.
 
DanielCoffey said:
I have had no issues what so ever with my Apple 27" Cinema Display since I bought it well over a year ago.

"they break, age poorly, drift worse than many, etc." - citation needed.
Click to expand...

You're going off one. You really do need a much larger sample size. Edit: Okay I didn't need to be that harsh there, but you do need to understand that contributing your experience with one unit over a year to a year and a half remains anecdotal at best. Most displays carry warranties of 3-5 years, and the aging tends to be mostly exponential and highly influenced by usage factors including brightness settings and total hours in use.

Edit: Also they do drift pretty badly. If you aren't profiling the display regularly anyway and don't notice it, that's fine. Many people don't notice it as much, or you could have been lucky on your unit. If you don't profile it regularly with a reasonably reliable hardware device, you may not notice. Most people seem to leave their displays at a relatively high brightness setting, and they don't understand calibration, profiling, etc. or they just see numbers that sound good and assume that means they own the display ever. It doesn't work that way. They're all moving targets, and the Apple display both drifts faster than I would like, and lacks a lot of hardware level tools to compensate for this.

It seems like every Apple display I've seen older than a year or two has some kind of major issue whether it's image persistence, uneven backlight aging, severe color shifts around the edges, etc. There is always the chance that this is less prevalent on the newest ones, but they still are not perfect. LG's quality control isn't exactly perfect, and Apple doesn't seem to add much beyond that point. The LED backlighting is still not an ideal choice for anything involving color grading, which is why it's not typically implemented on other displays in this price range. It's not necessarily a feature as Apple suggests. You can find similar backlighting techniques employed on $200 displays.
 
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My 2006 Cinema Display is still going strong. I will be sad the day it dies because I'm not a fan of those new glossy monitors. I highly recommend a nice NEC.
 
FWIW the 24" LED's are always in the shop. Bad PCB, backlight went out, glitchy, etc.
I love them for default (out of the box with a Mac) color but out of 12 or so 4 have had to be repaired. 2 of them twice!!!
 
I've got a 2010 Hex Mac Pro and use the 27 LED display, and love the setup.

I don't do professional editing or anything, but it's been great for everyday use and gaming under both Windows 7 and Lion.
 
I am totally confused on this post. OP are you wanting a Mac Pro or a Mac Mini???

Either will be fine for Photoshop but as others stated if you want to do After Effects you will want a Mac Pro.

I use a Mac Pro and 27inch ACD's (the one in my sig) and it is blazing fast. I use After Effects, Photoshop, Maya, Houdini, Unity 3D, Corel Painter, ZBrush, Aperture, and a few others on it just fine.
 
I guess I'm considering all options. I just wish we had a refreshed Mac Pro, that would be the best case scenario to really considering this. I hate to buy an "outdated" LED cinema and put it on a Mac Pro that needs an update.

basically I'm down to a few options:

Mac Pro + LED Cinema
LED Cinema to my Macbook AIR (already own the AIR)?
Mac Mini to Thunderbolt 27"
Macbook Pro 17" and go for the display later on.

I really want the desktop experience from Mac.
 
Yeah, I wouldn't really consider the LED display outdated. It uses the same panel as the Thunderbolt, and all of the extra functions on the Thunderbolt display like the ethernet port are redundant anyway.

It would be better if the Cinema Display was cheaper, but what can you do?
 
AMDGAMER said:
I guess I'm considering all options. I just wish we had a refreshed Mac Pro, that would be the best case scenario to really considering this. I hate to buy an "outdated" LED cinema and put it on a Mac Pro that needs an update.

basically I'm down to a few options:

Mac Pro + LED Cinema
LED Cinema to my Macbook AIR (already own the AIR)?
Mac Mini to Thunderbolt 27"
Macbook Pro 17" and go for the display later on.

I really want the desktop experience from Mac.
Click to expand...

That's quite a range. Photoshop and FCPX are quite ram hungry. If it's the old FCP then that one is stuck as a 32 bit app so a fast scratch disk would be the thing you'd need. I don't know how big your projects get. Either of those applications can run on very little for light work, yet if you have to deal with hdri or anything that runs 16-32 bit in photoshop, it eats up so much ram :mad:. You can mitigate this by turning thumbnails off, limiting history, and a few other things. If you're dealing with 8 bit dslr and still frame images, it's not too bad. This is just one of those areas where the range in potential requirements is massive.
 
i have a mac pro with a 27acd .. its not bad but I am still considering returning the display and picking up a refurb dell 3007fwp-hc .. actually two of them .. just not 100% sure what i want to do yet
 
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