CS2 performance on Mac Pro vs G4 based computers

I'm currently using a Powerbook G4 1.5 with 512mb. I am having a hard time using Photoshop because I've been working with really high resolution scans lately. I'm looking for someone who has both a Powerbook and a Mac Pro 2.66ghz, I would like to know whether or not moving up to a Mac Pro would speed things up for me since i'm on a G4. I know that the Mac Pro runs Adobe CS2 slower than the G5, but the G4 is a much slower processor than the G5 and my Powerbook has a 4200rpm drive. Any input would be greatly appreciated, I'm off to an Apple store for more info from a Genius, but I'd like some input from someone who uses both on a regular basis or something like that.
Thanks

My somewhat educated guess is that photoshop on the MacPro will be faster. The much faster cpu speed will offset the performance penalty of Rosetta.
I'd recommend at least 2gig but more like 4 gig, as that seems to be the sweet spot for photshop running on intel macs.
Take a look at these Benchmarks Actually the whole article is very informative.
Mike

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How is the performance of Mac Pro if i use it as host for windows and linux virtual machines.

How is the performance of Mac Pro if i use it as host for windows and linux virtual machines.
I am planning to buy a high performance PC to run my Windows and Linux servers as vitrual machines for my testing purposes.
Initially i planned to build my own computer with recommended configurations but considering space constaints and cooling factors i think Mac Pro can be a choice. But need some inputs if Mac pro (Intel Xeon E5, 12 GB RAM) is good for running virtual Machines.

You could even run Windows natively and still run your VM servers.
I have seen reports and such on MacRumors and elsewhere - run Windows natively as well as VMs (can also do testing and run Mavericks in a VM under Mavericks)
The fast internal PCIe-SSD, plus 6 or 8 cores, and 32-64GB RAM. Of course for $5,000 for 8-core, some Thunderbolt storage and 32GB/64GB RAM you can buy some serious hardware.

Strange CPU Performance issue Mac Pro, Logic 7.2.3......

Hi there,
I am experiencing a strange issue with Logic 7.2.3 and my Mac Pro.
I am running about 70 tracks in a tune I'm writing, with a lot of the EQ and dynamics processed on a Liquid Mix, but am experiencing a lot of CPU spikes, and drop outs in logic.
The System Performance meters are showing that one of the CPU cores is at full capacity, whilst the Activity Monitor is showing a total usage of about 40%.
http://www.ephexis.co.uk/images/cpu-grab.jpg
I have tried every combination of settings in the audio preferences, but cannot seems to get this track to play properly.
With 71 tracks, this machine is currently LESS powerful than the G5 that I have been working on until purchasing the Mac Pro.
I there anything else I can try? Are there any other means of controlling buffer size?
I have a suspicion that this may have something to do with the Plugin Delay Compensation set to 'All' - But without doing this, I cannot use the DSP effects of the liquid mix to work on a Bus! Very frustrating.
Many thanks for the help, any ideas at would be deeply appreciated,
Adam Ephexis
Mac Pro 2.66, 2GB, 1.5TB -=- MacBook Pro 2.16, 1GB, 100GB Mac OS X (10.4.8) Liquid Mix, Fireface 800, Apogee MiniDAC, Creamware A16 Ultra

Great!
Thanks for the tips guys.
I have tried to find an offending loop or part in the sequence, but cannot find anything at all thats causing the issue.
My suspiscion is that using the focusrite Liquid mix on a part, that is in turn going into a delay compensated bus, which has another Liquid mix plugin on it, is causing the issues. I use the total mix software in the fireface to perform the summing of the busses, which I think in turn may be causing the PDC to glitch a bit more.
Which is a bit annoying, as the mix in this tune is my best yet!
So I will attempt to remove the liquid mixes that are running in series in a chain, and see if thats the problem, but if that fails, time to re-format again!
I'll let you know how I get on in the next couple of days!
Thanks again,
Adam
Mac Pro 2.66, 2GB, 1.5TB -=- MacBook Pro 2.16, 1GB, 100GB Mac OS X (10.4.8) Logic 7.2.3 - Fireface 800, Focusrite Liquid Mix, Apogee MiniDAC, Creamware A16 Ultra

OT: PS2 performance on Mac Pro

I'm sick and tired of waiting for the mythical x1900XT G5 PCI-e edition, and I'm considering a Mac Pro with that card and 3 GB of RAM. I know from reports here that it should be quite fast with Aperture, but what I'm concerned about is Photoshop performance. I do most of my editing in PS2 (using the open in external editor command). The image files start out at 45 MB or so, and are often at 150 MB by the time I save them again.
My current set-up is a dual-core G5 2.0Ghz with 2.5 GB RAM and Raptor 10k RPM boot drive, using a second 400 GB HD as a scratch disk in PS2. I'm wondering how PS2 performance with a 2.66 MP + 1900XT + 3 GB of RAM would compare in "real world" usage with my current set-up.
My other option would be to get a ridiculously priced 7800GT for $800 and bump up RAM to 4 GB on my G5. But I figure I can sell the G5 for $1800 or so, and for a few hundred bucks more get a MP instead of sinking money into an older machine.
What do you think?

Sell the G5 and buy a MP. At this time of year it
often makes sense to wait for MacExpo SF January 8,
because new choices will be available (almost
assuredly quad cores) and prices of today's best
boxes will lower.
Hmmm... tricky. The MP boxes will be cheaper, but the resale value on my G5 will be lower too. I wonder if there's an advantage either way.

FCP Performance on Mac Pro

Hi! After 3 months of pushing, I finally got a Mac Pro 2.8ghz 8-core with Final Cut Studio 2. I just got the workstation setup and Final Cut Studio installed, all the updates are completed. Now I am getting down into some light training with some DV footage I have to familiarize myself with the capabilities of this system. So far I have not been impressed. I imported 2 30-sec DV clips, dropped them into the sequence with crossfades, and when I playback, I hear 2 seconds of audio followed by beeps, and at the point where the clips are supposed to cross-dissolve the playback stops with a warning that frames have been dropped. I had better performance with iMovie on my G4. I know that FCP is a bigger beast but having worked with Avid MC on a PowerMac 9600 I am expecting more out of this setup. What in the world could I be doing wrong?

LD Bear old wrote:
When I open the .dv clip in Quicktime it shows format: DV, 720x480 (640x480), Millions, Stereo, 48.000 kHz. What else should I check?
Ahh, I think I see your issue - and it's something that many folks who are moving up from iMovie experience.
Basically, FCP doesn't like .dv files. It likes .mov files. Open up you .dv file in QuickTime and export it out as a QuickTime movie (a .mov file). Be sure to select the Options... button in the export dialog (since you're bound to be overwhelmed, use the settings from your FCP Timeline as a guide) in QuickTime. Using the default settings in QT will not help you (the default is meant for web sharing, not editing, and will end up being step backwards).
In the future, avoid using iMovie captured material in FCP. Capture and digitize using FCP. Don't ask me why Apple decided to do this, but you cannot simply port your files from iMovie and get them working in FCP without a lot of hassle.

XAVC 4K playback performance on Mac Pro

2009 Nehalem 2.66GHz 8-core Mac Pro with 16GB RAM and GTX570, running OS X 10.8.5.
As part of my freelance post work, I've started tackling 4K XAVC-I footage from the Sony FS7. The footage loads alright, but is impossible to play without serious stuttering. Brand new project. I tried any playback resolutions between full and 1/8, same behavior. I can't play a single second without the drop frame indicator going orange and starting to rack up dropped frames.
CPU utilization during playback is steady at 70%, and drive reads are at 80MB/s (our SAN successfully delivers 350MB/s).
Tried both Premiere CC and CC(2014), same behavior.
Performance in DaVinci Resolve doesn't look much different.
It's going to be a week or so before I'm back at the machine, so I'm preparing my attack plan. "Gotta buy a new computer" is the easiest possible answer but also the most expensive (we can all predict the boss` reaction) and not necessarily accurate one. Maybe it is the right one, but part of my job is to eliminate other possible (and cheaper) causes first.
What is the current state of 4K playback in Premiere? Is it two camps of "always worked for me" and "never works for me"? Has anyone had playback issues that were fixed by updating CUDA drivers, Premiere patches, identifying odd bugs, etc.?
I'm going to play with the video output, Mercury settings, source drive, and transcode to 4K ProRes at different bitrates... any other suggestions?
We all know that the new black Mac Pro "can do 4K", but I haven't heard a statement that "no other Macs can". Surprisingly, I haven't found discussions (let alone official recommendations) of minimum hardware requirements for Premiere and 4K. I'd be happy to be pointed to any if they exist. The CPUs in this 2009 Mac Pro should still pack more punch than any iMac model in the market, and is 25% slower than the baseline 2013 MP. If it's the GPU, I'd be happy to hear at least one testimony like "never worked with my GTX570 but once I went GTX680 I finally set sailing".
Thanks!

I use a Sony Notebook with 4 K Display and a USB 3 disk 2TB with footage from the FS 7, sequence lenght 3 hours and I have no problems. All is working very well.

Best hard drive performance on mac pro for final cut express

This week I'll be setting up a basic 4 core mac pro with 16 gb ram and 2 internal- 2tb WD Caviar Black drives. I'm wondering what would give me the best performance for running final cut express, and I'm considering setting up software raid 0 or using one drive for boot and one for scratch. Or should I set up software raid 0 with boot and scratch partitions? Or other suggestions? Thanks.

My recommendations -
With 2 drives in your Mac Pro, use *one disk for OS X and all of your apps;* the *second disk for data* (including your FCE scratch disk location). Partition each drive as a *single partition,* which will maximize performance over time.
In addition, you should invest in at least 1 external drive to use for backup purposes; if you don't, the day will come when you wish you had.
I strongly recommend AGAINST doing software RAID. Certainly not for your situation with only 2 drives, one of which will be your system HD; but also because hardware RAID is faster, more reliable, and does not require CPU resources to run.
Your internal SATA drives will provide plenty of performance for most video editing needs. You also have the ability to put 4 drives in your Mac Pro, in which case you can utilize the extra drives to provide additional performance if/when you get into serious multi-multi track video compositing.

Slow Performance On Mac Pro 12-Core

Hello Everyone,
I just recently purchased a 2012 Mac pro 12-Core and i have been getting unbelievabley slow performance with it. I am using Premiere Pro CS6 and it seems that the footage can sometimes get a bit laggy at times and not play back smoothly, sometimes rendering can take a bit of time as well. However here are the specs of my system:
Mac Pro 12-Core 2.4GHz (2.67GHz Turbo Boost)
40GB of Ram
ATI 5770 Graphics Card
1TB scratch disk (with a user on the drive that i can boot into)
OCZ 120GB Vertex 3 SSD OS/APPS drive
First question i would like to get answered once and for all.. Did i make a bad decision by purchasing a computer with such a slow clock speed (2.4GHz)?? I figured since The new editing software is switching to 64bit it shouldn't depend on clock speed anymore? (i just want to be sure that i purchased a more than capable machine) However i will be buying a Samsung 840 Pro Series 256GB SSD Drive for Scratch within the month. (I dont have the budget to buy a Raid controller yet to utilize 6GB/s transfer speeds, so 1 Fast SSD drive will have to do for now)
I should mention the current SSD drive im on right now only has 13GB remaining, would that affect performance? Also, my 1Tb media drive is filled up with CRAP from my previous computer (Migration transferred EVERYTHING to that drive, only 120GB remains) would that drive with the media im working with affect performance too? Also just as a test, i took some footage from my GoPro Hero 3 camera and put it on my SSD to see if that would eliminate the lag, but still lag was present in Premiere.. (the footage was in a crappy .M4P format, so that may have affected it, but I dont know)
Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!
-Thanks in Advance!

The new editing software is switching to 64bit it shouldn't depend on clock speed anymore?
Wrong, clock speed is everything.
I should mention the current SSD drive im on right now only has 13GB remaining, would that affect performance?
No, not really.
Also, my 1Tb media drive is filled up with CRAP from my previous computer (Migration transferred EVERYTHING to that drive, only 120GB remains) would that drive with the media im working with affect performance too?
When fill rates go up, performance goes down. With almost 90% fill rate, the disk performs only at around 50% of a new disk.
Two disks is absolute bare minimum, and your cores will constantly be waiting for the disks to read or write data, sitting idle most of the time.
Also just as a test, i took some footage from my GoPro Hero 3 camera and put it on my SSD to see if that would eliminate the lag, but still lag was present in Premiere..
GoPro material requires a very fast computer, which yours is not with the low clock speed, outdated E5620 CPU's, only two disks, and a non-CUDA capable video card.
Take a look at the PPBM5 Benchmark and look at the system at rank # 854, which is a MacPro, very similar to your system, dual E5620, AMD video card, less memory but uses three disks.
So, your system would be around the same rank as the one above, among the slowest 25% of all systems and something like 10 - 15 times slower than a fast system. You tax your system to the extreme with the GoPro Hero3 material, and the consequence is the slow performance you see.
Sorry, not much you can do, other than get a new system. If you sell it now, it may get you a price, good enough to get a much faster Windows system and maybe even keep the change. Simply said, you bought a MacPro for € 3.5 K, sell it for € 3 K, buy a PC for € 2.5 K that is around 5-6 times faster and your loss is recovered.
However i will be buying a Samsung 840 Pro Series 256GB SSD Drive for Scratch within the month
What a pity the MacPro does not have SATA 6G ports, only SATA 3G, because then that SSD will run at almost half speed.

Parallels performance on Mac Pro

I'm strongly considering a Mac Pro purchase to replace not only a Dual G5 but also a Dual Core Pentium Dell. I run large format posters and prints from my home office. I only have the Dell because the RIP software (Roland Versaworks) is Windows only. Can anyone running Parallels on either a 3GHz or 2.66GHz give me some insight as to performance of ANY apps that you may be using Parallels for.
My setup would include either the 2.66 or 3GHz, 4GB RAM and the 250GB HD for starters. I'm going to customize storage with HD I purchase seperately.
It would be real nice to be able to get those two heaters from under my desk!
Power Mac G5/2.7GHz DP, MBP 2.16GHz, Powerbook 12 G4/1.5GHz Mac OS X (10.4.7)

parallel currently does not work with the Mac Pro.
The folks at Parallels have said they will release an
update n the near future that will correct the
problem that keeps the Mac Pro and Parallels from
running.
Not 100% correct.
From the Admin user go into the terminal and enter
sudo nvram boot-args="-legacy maxmem=XXXX"
where XXXX is a number. Parallels suggest 1024 or 2048, but for me I had to go-to 4096 before it worked. Then reboot. This puts the Mac Pro back into 32 bit mode.
You can then start parallels again and create & run your virtual systems.
To reset back to 64 bit user
sudo nvram boot-args=""
A screen-shot of Parallels running on my Mac Pro
Here I am running both Suse 8.2 Linux and WinXP SP2

Lousy Performance of Mac Pro X1900 XT in Leopard

Being the paranoid person I am, I installed Leopard to an external FW 800 drive to test it. Immediately, the window drawing in Leopard did not seem as snappy to me as it did in Tiger. Then, I pulled up iTunes, to check what version of iTunes comes with Leopard 10.5.0... I was stunned, not by the version of iTunes, but at the graphics lameness I witnessed.
If you launch iTunes then choose iTunes | About iTunes you will see that when the credits scroll by, they scroll by all choppy and herky-jerky. Yes folks, that's right, Apple's fastest and most top of the line machine -- a Mac Pro with an X1900 XT -- is not sufficiently swift enough to properly display the credits for iTunes.
Yes, I tried 10.5.1, same difference.
Needless to say, I'm sticking with Tiger until Apple fixes the X1900 XT driver(s) in Leopard.
Can anyone else with a Mac Pro and X1900 XT please go to iTunes | About iTunes and commiserate?

Just for info; Leopard is not a full 64 bit operating system. In fact, there is only 1 Apple GUI app that is compiled for x86_64 and that is Xcode, and even that runs in 32 bit mode by default, unless you uncheck the "Run in 32 bit mode" box when you do a Get Info on it.
There are many 64 bit frameworks and libraries, but the rest of the operating system applications are all 32 bit.
You can see that for yourself by running:
file /path to applications/* | grep x86_64
In a terminal.
Hyperion:~ will$ file /Applications/Utilities//Contents/MacOS/ | grep x86_64
/Applications/Utilities/OSXPM.app/Contents/MacOS/OSXPM: Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64
Hyperion:~ will$
I have 2 x86_64 apps, but only because I recompiled them to see if they worked.
There are a handful of x86_64 apps in /usr/bin and /usr/sbin, but thats about it. Oh, Apache is 64 bit by the way.

HD video performance on Mac Pro 4

I have a new Mac Pro 4 core. It has 1.5TB of disk in a raid 0 configuration and 5GB of RAM. It also uses the ATI x1900 video card. The display is an Apple Cinema 23".
It has done all of the software updates.
The only software loaded onto the machine so far is FCS.
Now when I try to watch The BBC HD video at 1920x1080 that I download to my local hard drive (vide from here http://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/hd/bbc-blue.html ), it is very choppy.
IMHO, this machine should be able to play this video back in real time with NO issue. What do I need to do to correct this issue?

To tell the truth, sending folks off to read a blog or another site when asking for help troubleshooting. And you fail to mention you have the X1900 in a non-supported or alternate slot.
Mixing 7300 GT and Radeon doesn't work. And having two Radeons???
There are lots of threads here on using the Expansion Slot Utility and video card configurations.

GarageBand performance on Mac Pro

Yesterday when I was composing a beautiful song I had a couple of instruments playing at the same time. At the bottom of the screen I see the notes of the score I´m composing as they are played. While this is nevertheless surprising, I am actually curious about how this would look on a Mac Pro.
As soon as the song audio produces just a little bit of work for the CPU, the screen refresh goes down from perfect timing to one second chokes on my machine as the same time as CPU load goes beyond 110 %. Activity monitor show there are about 20 threads in GarageBand. The sound is perfect. What happens if, say one buys a 2x2.0 GHz Mac Pro(4 cores totally)? The actual CPU frequency will be lower, but would the display respond better? That is: Is GarageBand a program that handles multiple threads well or does one have to buy a Mac Pro with higher CPU frequency?
(I´m using a 30" Apple Cinema HD Display)

pink_snow wrote:
The hatter wrote:
Can you imagine a Mac Pro not handing it without breaking into a sweat? I can't.
What does this sentence mean? Please simplify!
I'm positive he worded that incorrectly. "What he meant to say is "Can you imagine a Mac Pro that couldn't handle it without breaking a sweat?" Basically a Mac Pro is designed to go the distance with applicaitons like this, given you've configured the machines with enough memory and storage resources.

Photoshop CS2 Trial Install Crash on Mac Pro

Well, I've seen the benchmark sites running Photoshop CS2 on a Mac Pro, but when I try to install the trial version, it crashs during the install process. I tried re-installing Mac OS X and re-installing Photoshop first thing, but with the same result.
A search only brought up a previously known issue with QuickTime 7.1, but the fix was to update to 7.1.1 - since my install has QT 7.1.2 this doesn't seem applicable.
Doom3 is the only other Rosetta app I've tried, and it runs fine - heck, I didn't even initially realize that the demo is the PPC-only version.
Has anyone else gotten it successfully installed? I don't want to spring out the cash for the full thing until I know it works (and I want to test out the Kodak Digital ROC plug-in to make sure it works as well.)
(I'm asking here since my lack of search results leads me to think it might be Mac Pro specific.)
Take care,
P.M.
Mac Pro Mac OS X (10.4.7) (2.66/160GB/7300GT/2GB/BT + 250GB PATA drive)

This worked for me....
Restart
During restart, hold Ctrl + Command + P + R to reset the PRAM
After this, the computer will flash and reboot again and should boot into the Mountain Lion Installer.
Good luck.

Mac Pro and Adobe CS2

Since I have been using Adobe CS2 on my Mac Pro, I have been having alot of crashes especially Indesign. Anyone else had problems and know of a way to fix it? I have updated all my software.

Grant,
I've installed Windows XP Pro to run Photoshop CS2, Vue5 Infinite, and a number of other programs which have yet to be rewritten for Intel Macs as well as numerous Windows only apps. While it is true that Photoshop runs at a native speed on Windows, it runs just fine under Rosetta for me. I suspect it depends on the file sizes one works with and what your expectations are. Coming from an older G4, Photoshop with Rosetta is much faster than my old computer. Typically I work on 100 - 300mb images.
The original inquiry was about crashing issues and Version Cue is a real culprit and known issue as is running Photoshop and Illustrator concurrently. As I'll run just one at a time because of that issue and all my Adobe licenses are for specific apps rather than the suites so Version Cue was never an issue, I've not had a Adobe crash yet.
MacPro, G4 1.5GHZ, Rev.A iMac, Mac IIsi, Mac Plus Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Mac pro with 16GB RAM for CS3? CS3 cant use more than 3 GB? why

hi
does it make any sense to buy 16GB RAM for a mac pro
only for working with CS3?
i am retouching prof. and in the moment we run CS2 on the mac pro.
later CS3 is in the pipeline.
we ordered 16GB RAM in order to work with HDR images and big file sizes coming from hasselblad h2 and h3 (300dpi, 23 x 23inch, round 50 or 100 layers, filesize 1 - 2GB per image.)
thanks

found this article @ adobe website
thanks for your help!
"When you run Photoshop CS3 on a 64-bit operating system, such as Mac OS X v10.4 and later, Photoshop can access up to 8 GB of RAM. You can see the actual amount of RAM Photoshop can use in the Let Photoshop Use number when you set the Let Photoshop Use slider in the Performance preference to 100%. The RAM above the 100% used by Photoshop, which is from approximately 3 GB to 3.7 GB, can be used directly by Photoshop plug-ins (some plug-ins need large chunks of contiguous RAM), filters, and actions. If you have more than 4 GB (to 8 GB), the RAM above 4 GB is used by the operating system as a cache for the Photoshop scratch disk data. Data that previously was written directly to the hard disk by Photoshop is now cached in this high RAM before being written to the hard disk by the operating system. If you are working with files large enough to take advantage of these extra 2 GB of RAM, the RAM cache can increase performance of Photoshop.
The default RAM allocation setting in Photoshop CS3 is 70%. These settings should be optimal for most users. To get the ideal RAM allocation setting for your system, change the RAM allocation in 5% increments and watch the performance of Photoshop in the Activity Monitor. You must quit and restart Photoshop after each change to see the change take effect.
The available RAM shown in the Performance preferences has already deducted an amount that is reserved for the operating system from the total RAM in your computer. You shouldn't set the percentage of RAM to be used by Photoshop to 100% (unless you are using more than 2G of RAM) because other applications which run at the same time as Photoshop (for example, Adobe Bridge CS3) need a share of the available RAM. Some applications use more RAM than you might expect. For example, web browsers can use 20-30 MB of RAM, and music players can use 20-50 MB of RAM. Watch the Activity Monitor to view the RAM allocations on your computer.
Watch your efficiency indicator while you work in Photoshop to determine the amount of RAM you'll need to keep your images in RAM. The efficiency indicator is available from the pop-up menu on the status bar of your image or from the Palette Options on the Info Palette pop-up menu. When the efficiency indicator goes below 95-100%, you are using the scratch disk. If the efficiency is around 60%, you'll see a large performance increase by changing your RAM allocation or adding RAM."

CS2 performance on Mac Pro vs G4 based computers

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