Mac Pro 5,1

[gab0.1992]

Hi people. I have been a watcher/reader since don't when now im in. I'm an semi-pro photographer, in May next year I get my BA in photography also do light graphic design and video. My photography work are more intensive specializing in beauty doing hardcore retouching and commercial stuff. I already have an Macbook pro 15" 2011 with 16GB Ram and 256Gb SSD 840 Pro which I put to it limits retouching and exporting D600's large files. Few time the machine got crazy and even went shutdown few times.

I was waiting fir the nMP but the price are over my current budget. I verify the new Retina Macbook Pro but even the maxed out one even satisfy my needs which is few better than my current setup. I discard the iMac has I already has an Thunderbolt display and its basically the same power as the retina macbook pro.

My last hope was to get an second hand, refurb or even new Mac Pro 5,1 with 8 cores put it an 32Gb ram and sdd(may be a pcie one to run high 800MBs) a kick ass GPU.

My question is, does worth invest in the MP (which makes me get rid of the display as the MP doesn't has thunderbolt) and gave me the power I need or just "wait" and get later an nMP? Any suggestions?

I hope some of you guys can help me figure it out. Thanks!!

 

[xxBURT0Nxx]

a mac pro is still going to be pretty expensive.

The Thunderbolt display probably won't accept the signal over mDP (seems to be pretty hit and miss). You could always sell it and pick up an Apple Cinema Display though.

 

[wonderspark]

I've plugged my 30" ACD into the Thunderbolt port on my 2012 MacBook Pro with a dual-link DVI adapter, and it works fine, so I'd think your Thunderbolt display would plug into the Mini DisplayPort on the GPU of a Mac Pro just fine.

I put 16GB RAM and dual SSDs in my laptop for Adobe CS6, and it works very well, especially if I plug a third disk in via USB 3.0... Adobe Premiere loves when you spread video files over as many disks as possible. The 2012 MacBooks use an nVidia GPU and CUDA, which helps, too. Good thing about Adobe is that they also use OpenCL.

I say you'd be fine with a refurb 2012 MacBook Pro or a 2009-2012 Mac Pro. I bet you'd even get by with a second SSD in your current laptop.

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a mac pro is still going to be pretty expensive.

The Thunderbolt display probably won't accept the signal over mDP (seems to be pretty hit and miss). You could always sell it and pick up an Apple Cinema Display though.

I've wondered about this... it's a shame if you can't use a TB display in mDP.

 

[xxBURT0Nxx]

in theory it is supposed to work, but I have read of many instances where people have tried plugging their mDP macs into an ATBD and they get no picture.

Maybe there has been an update by now that I didn't read about, but as far as I know, mDP macs won't display a picture on an ATBD.

 

[rei101]

I work in video and 3D and I do not need that much power... well, I do for 3D.