New Mac Pro - Config for graphics?

Looking to purchase a new 6-Core Mac Pro for high end photo retouching & 3D modeling/rendering. I would love to be able to afford the la$t of each option for CPU, memory, storage, graphics, etc. But this would immediately push the price tag over $10K -which is way beyond my intended general price point.
I've been using Macs professionally since 1987, and tradionally options like ram and displays are more economically purchased from other vendors. I know from my last Macbook Pro purchase that some options are permanent and can't be upgraded. I'm tempted to go with the stock config here, with the intention of adding ram and a new display as needed.
Can the flash storage be upgraded later? 256Gb seems like barely enough for OS and a few apps. I currently keep my itunes library on my boot drive, but that won't fly with 256Gb. Can the itunes library reside on the non boot drive or would that have to be iCloud?
$1500 for the next bump up in CPU is steep. You can never have enough raw power for 3D rendering, but this is another option I would like to upgrade later as needed. Is this possible?
I would like to keep the purchase price close to the base cost, but would be prepared to pay upgrades that offer major productivity boosts, or any components that can't be upgraded later (but perhaps the latter is a moot qhestion)
I know I can get answers to these questions from Apple sales, but am hoping to get suggestions from tech savvy users who employ a similar workflow, and preferably have experience with the NEW HARDWARE.
thanks

The expectation is that the Built-in SSD is the Boot Drive, and that User files and work files will go into Thunderbolt-to-something external enclosure(s), the number of which, and specifications of which, are your choice.
The 6-core is a sweet spot, giving you more cores with a still fast base CPU speed for less than half the price of an additional complete unit.
There is a knee in the RAM upgrade curve. Using today's modules, the 16GB modules are RDIMMs, and do not play nice with ANY other sizes.There are four independent memory channels, that can be locked into pairs. I have not read anything definitive about why/why not to upgrade DIMMs by the each (except that by example Apple has demonstrated that three modules in the four slots works fine).

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New mac pro -config for photo/3D?

Getting ready to pull the trigger on my first new desktop mac in awhile. I need to get this right and am looking for suggestions. I have a medium budget, so can't go for the ultra bling. Just looking for good value, esp. in areas that can't be upgraded later, like the video card. Will probably add more RAM later as needed. I spoke to a very helpful apple sales rep. and his suggested specs are below. I'm pretty tempted to runwith his config.
I'm a photographer but mainly high end PShop retoucher -with large complex images. Also modeling & rendering in 3D (still images -not animation). Will probably be doing more video.
As stated above, I don't have a huge budget. But suggestions are welcome -esp. from anyone who owns one of the new workstations.
Thanks!
- 6 core (3.5ghz)
- 16Gg DDR3
- 512Gb Flash Storage
- Dual AMD Firepro D700 GPUs w/6Gb of GDDR5 VRAM
- Accessory kit
- Apple Care

You are hedging bets that the D700s might someday prove their value, not a given.
I strongly suggest you careful review and read and re-read
www.macperformanceguide.com as he is testing and is also heavy into CS6/CC and a photographer.
A lot of discussion, and some disappointed, at whether the nMP is suitable workstation for CS6 here:
http://forums.macrumors.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1
If you do, then go with 3rd party memory of course to get you to 32GB and above, and t hat will have an impact so I would not put it off; so buy with minimum. Might even go for the 1TB SSD now instead, or plan to later when Samsung and OWC and other vendors offer upgrade kits.
3D - makes the D700 a 'must' and wish there was an upgrade path, especially down the road in two years when hopefully new GPUs and other features are out. If apps can be tuned and optimized like FCP-X 10.1+ is then dual GPU will be strong selling points.
Your budget for Thunderbolt storage.

New Mac Pro overkill for Logic Pro X?

Hi all,
Is the new Mac Pro overkill for audio work? I use Logic Pro X and mainly use huge sample libraries with Kontakt, so I would get 64gb memory, a Lacie 10tb Thunderbolt drive to store the samples and 2 Apple Thunderbolt displays. Or would an iMac suffice?
I don't want to upgrade my old 8-core, dont want a previous gen 12-core, and the price doesnt matter.
Thank you.

If you do want best ideal in performance for audio, then PCIe SSDs are great even now. And may really need TB2 to shine and share bandwidth.
SSDs with near zero seeks and latency and low prices for Samsung 840 EVO 1TB or 750GB are very appealing.
I would wait until - OS X has had two updates to refine drivers; 3-6 months for any needed changes in firmware for EFI and SMC (which seem to be a regular of ALL new Macs and Mac Pro models); even tweaks to production and TB2 chipsets and such, maybe even those new AMD GPUs.
Version "1.0" hardware and OS really, and of course vendors will now begin to really have some hands on and expect apps, Apple no exception - to need updates.

"Best" configuration for new Mac Pro used for Aperture?

I'm getting ready to order a new Mac Pro and would like to configure it to optimize Aperture performance.
On CPUs - I have found no benchmarks which show whether Aperture would benefit from 2 quad core processors versus 1. Does anyone know of any benchmarks or have any experience using a single quad core? I don't want to spend $500 on a 2nd processor if Aperture can't use it.
On Graphics cards - I was sold on the GForce 8800, due to it's supposed blazing speed for gaming and it's larger on board memory. However, after reading the following review http://www.barefeats.com/harper10.html , these guys seem to imply that applications such as Aperture actually run faster with the standard Radeon 2600 video card! If anyone has any experience or opinions on this review, I'd love to hear them!
On memory - I know from experience that Aperture will use all of the physical memory you make available to it. I plan on ordering the standard 2GB from Apple, then adding 8GB from 3rd party for total of 10MB.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I can only say that when faced with the same decision last month, I went with a 2.8 8-core/8800GT/10gb RAM/library stored on 2nd internal drive setup and am completely satisfied with Aperture's speed. Beyond satisfied, really, borderline thrilled to be honest. No beach balls, perfectly responsive adjustment sliders, smooth and quick scrolling through images (even with Quick Preview mode turned off). Aperture 2 definitely takes advantage of all 8 cores - I have MenuMeters installed and can watch its CPU usage across all 8 cores. Exporting, for example, is fast and uses all cores for background processing.
I have seen a couple small anomalies though...when moving photos around in a light table, I get some odd flashing artifacts on the right side of screen that could be graphics card related. Visually annoying but it doesn't affect performance. I'm also seeing some weird behavior with keywords not appearing in Tooltips and in the Viewer, but it's intermittent and is most likely a software bug and not my hardware setup.

Which Mac Pro config for PShop (and others)

Which processor config is best for Pshop multitaskers? Looking to choose a (new) Mac Pro. I am primarily a photo retoucher & photographer (in that order) But I also push my system doing 3D renderings, and often streaming Pandora while I work. Another forum offered suggestions to get the Quad core -and choose the 3.33Ghz 6 core "Westmere" (+ $1200) --as opposed to my first choice, which was the 8 Core w/two 2.4 Ghz "Westmere" processors. My goal is to keep the total cost under $4K -including additional RAM + ATI Radeon HD 5870. I chose the 8 core unit for the added RAM capability, and I thought that 8 cores would help when running multiple apps. But other posters had opined that since most apps -including Pshop (CS5) DON'T take advantage of multiprocessing the faster single processor w/6 cores would take the lead. I am a pro retoucher, and am often working multiple VERY large layered files. I do NOT do animation or video. I am also thinking of waiting for the next Mac Pro update -which past history suggests a possible late spring (2011) rollout. ( I wouldn't want a laptop as I work exclusively at my own studio, and want as much horsepower + longevity as I can afford)
Opinions appreciated -esp. real world tests using CURRENT Mac Pros. Thanks!

Yes, for best memory bandwidth performance, use 8 DIMMs, and it doesn't matter much what your mix and match is (other than certified of course for Mac Pro).
http://www.barefeats.com/harper3.html
No need to every discard the Apple memory until you get the urge to go to more than 8GB. Buying a full set of same and same time insures that they are less likely to deviate or have enough difference to cause trouble (even Crucial batches vary a bit).
I prefer TechWorks as a cut above, quality is good as it gets, comparable to Micron.
http://eshop.macsales.com/search/MatchedSets:+800Mhz+MacPro
The older Mac Pro was more trouble to get an ideal setup.

What's the best Mac Pro config for Fireworks?

What's the best Mac config for Fireworks?
I can pretty much get whatever Mac I want at work... My boss is sick and tired of watching Fireworks crash all the time... I figure a hefty processor and lots of RAM and maybe a SSD will help…
I should get a Mac Pro right? Which processor?
• Two 2.40GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon processors (12 cores)
• Two 2.66GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon processor (12 cores)
• Two 3.06GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon (12 cores)
Should I get 24GB RAM?? Or is that overkill?
I'll get a 2TB serial hard drive…
I should get a 512 GB solid state drive offered by Apple right?
Or is it possible to get a larger better 3rd party SSD?
And then maybe two 21" Displays… Two 27s seems a little much… or does it?
Thanks in advance.

Oh and what about video cards? Or is Apple's default ok? (I'm not doing hard core PhotoShop retouching or anything).

Performance with the new Mac Pros?

I sold my old Mac Pro (first generation) a few months ago in anticipation of the new line-up. In the meantime, I purchased a i7 iMac and 12GB of RAM. This machine is faster than my old Mac for most Aperture operations (except disk-intensive stuff that I only do occasionally).
I am ready to purchase a "real" Mac, but I'm hesitating because the improvements just don't seem that great. I have two questions:
1. Has anyone evaluated qualitative performance with the new ATI 5870 or 5770? Long ago, Aperture seemed pretty much GPU-constrained. I'm confused about whether that's the case anymore.
2. Has anyone evaluated any of the new Mac Pro chips for general day-to-day use? I'm interested in processing through my images as quickly as possible, so the actual latency to demosaic and render from the raw originals (Canon 1-series) is the most important metric. The second thing is having reasonable performance for multiple brushed-in effect bricks.
I'm mostly curious if anyone has any experience to point to whether it's worth it -- disregarding the other advantages like expandability and nicer (matte) displays.
Thanks.
Ben

Thanks for writing. Please don't mind if I pick apart your statements.
"For an extra $200 the 5870 is a no brainer." I agree on a pure cost basis that it's not a hard decision. But I have a very quiet environment, and I understand this card can make a lot of noise. To pay money, end up with a louder machine, and on top of that realize no significant benefit would be a minor disaster.
So, the more interesting question is: has anyone actually used the 5870 and can compare it to previous cards? A 16-bit 60 megapixel image won't require even .5GB of VRAM if fully tiled into it, for example, so I have no ability, a priori, to prove to myself that it will matter. I guess I'm really hoping for real-world data. Perhaps you speak from this experience, Matthew? (I can't tell.)
Background work and exporting are helpful, but not as critical for my primary daily use. I know the CPU is also used for demosaicing or at least some subset of the render pipeline, because I have two computers that demonstrate vastly different render-from-raw response times with the same graphics card. Indeed, it is this lag that would be the most valuable of all for me to reduce. I want to be able to flip through a large shoot and see each image at 100% as instantaneously as possible. On my 2.8 i7 that process takes about 1 second on average (when Aperture doesn't get confused and mysteriously stop rendering 100% images).
Ben

In need of a new Mac Pro, which one?

In the market for a new Mac Pro, mainly for CS5 apps, an ocassional Final Cut project and some Modo rendering (simple work). My Mac is an early 2008 2.8 GHz 8 core with 10 gigs of RAM, rock solid performance and trouble free and I'm looking to buy a new one within the next week. The 4 core 2.8 appeals to me for the lower price, but inclined for the 8 core, is the $1,000 difference between 4 and 8 core woth it? The 4 core has a faster processor, so I would assume that the difference in speed is basically a non-issue for the work I do, am I right? On the other hand, I rather get the 4 core with at least 12 gigs of ram, since most apps don't take advantage of 8 cores.
Need opinions and suggestions and if someone has a link for performance comparisons test between the two, would be appreciated, can't find any.

Not everyone, but more than a few, swear by SSD making their Mac run smooth and faster all around.
You are rather low on RAM for any real strong CS5 use.
Your Mac can boot into 64-bit kernel, too. Read up on that on MPG and along with 24GB pays 15% dividends.
And you can take advantage of 5870 or 5770 as well as Quadro 4000 ($789 PNY Quadro for Mac on Amazon, versus $1195 on Apple Store). 5770 + 4000 is $1050 investment.
You 'should' be using say 3 x 2-3TB enterprise version drives. And 120-240GB SSD $600.
Intel 3.2GHz Harpertown (Penryn) 5400s are probably not cost effective and seems the highest MHz you can go.
I go with coffee can, create an account to go towards the next system. Put X-amount aside each month and only buy on cash or your business pays for itself in six months.
The real hard part comes when a new model comes out, knowing the first 3 months are often rough and best to hold off, wait, read the reviews and reports. And know that buying that while today you could 'down grade' to Snow Leopard, the next time you can't and it takes time to optimize all the drivers and software that a workstation is more likely to need.
If you have $3.5K burning a hole, then the ref'd 2.8 and optimize "the heck" out of it, with W3680 and everything else, and then sell yours later too for $1500 probably.
http://store.apple.com/us/product/FC560LL/A
Your 8-core 2,8 is not yet ready to retire!

Installing SSD in new mac pro

hello,
looking into purchasing an ssd for soon arriving mac pro.
already purchased a 16g memory and a 2T HHD upgrade.
i came across the speed tests for ssd on start up and the ssd's seems pretty impressive. (OWC site)
I'm going to be using the new mac pro primarily for processing landscape photograpy.
PS5, LR5, autopan pro and the nik software are the programs that i wil be running most ot the time.
files sizes sometimes reach 1+g.
Question.
If i install a new SSD, probably a 120G Mercury Electra from OWC in one of my bays what should be on it? Just OS?
I have a 1T HHD that came with the MPro and I have another 2T HHD that I purchased for photo storage.
Not quite sure how the two different types of HD's will work together from a speed standpoint
Very new to this so any thoughts or suggestions would be welcome.
Thank you.
Owen

Some folks buy themselves an SSD thinking they are going to get a great a performance boost. But the boost they get by only adding an SSD is that Applications launch faster, and not much else.
If you want a bigger boost, and a boost across the board, move the user files off, leaving only System, Applications, Library, and the hidden unix files behind on the Boot Drive. Mac OS X is hugely over-configured on main memory. It is incessantly going back to the Boot Drive for a little of this, a little of that, and it moves the drive heads away from the data files you want to be reading and writing. Once you are not moving the heads away from your data to pick up system stuff all the time, your data drive will get faster.
The big payback is using a Boot drive. An incremental improvement is using an especially fast spinning drive like a VelociRaptor 10K for your Boot Drive. An additional incremental improvement is using an SSD for your Boot drive.
If you just add an SSD, but do not segregate the System, etc on its own drive, you pay top dollar for launching Applications faster. A big disappointment.
japamac's Blog: Make Space for performance -- Moving the home folder

Premiere Pro CC & New Mac Pro - Audio Line Out Issue

I'm having a few issues with the audio line out on the new Mac Pro. For some reason, Line Out locks into Premiere Pro. When I switch programs, the audio line out device stays locked to Premiere Pro and the only way to get other programs to be able to output audio when Premiere Pro is not current application, is to go into System Preferences > Sound and click onto an alternative output and then click back onto Line Out.
Thanks,
Jon

Thanks.

Downgrading New Mac pro to Mountain Lion

Is it possible to downgrade a New Mac Pro to Mountain Lion?
Apple has removed the Open Transport API from Mavericks and we need it to run a specific medical program.
The software runs on our old Macs. Just wondering if its ok to do this on the new Mac Pro.

Thanks for the thoughts people.
I didn't think it could be possible.
We have a solution - albeit a messy one.
The software component that is incompatible is a DICOM server (medical image server). The actual viewing software used to manipulate the image is compatible - just the image import component is not.
Putting it simply we will set up some folder aliases over the network so the viewing software will just use the image folders on the old Mac as their repository.
We have also contacted the developers to get them to update their software! As technically, it is not compatible with Mac...

Are the graphics cards offered for the new mac pro HDCP compliant??

hi are the graphics cards offered for the new mac pro hdcp compliant??

See if this helps
http://macperformanceguide.com/index_topics.html#MacPro2013

Questions about buying a new Mac Pro for 4k video editing.

Hi everyone,
I'm currently looking into buying a new mac pro and I have a few questions. I'm a filmmaker/freelance editor looking to get a system that can handle any/at least most 4k formats that I might throw at it, and will hopefully last me around 7 years or so, like my last mac pro has. I've saved up about $5,300 and am becoming more obsessed with getting it asap, but am willing to wait a bit and save up more if necessary. I also play the occasional elder scrolls or civilization game, and might run windows on the new system as well. So here are my questions:
1. I've read rumors that a newer build could be released this year, with newer processors and graphics cards. Is there anything to point to when? I tend to buy things a month before a newer version is released, and I'd like to prevent myself from doing it this time around..
Here's the Build I'm looking at:
6 core
2 D700s
base ram to be upgraded myself to 32Gb (2x16Gb cards leaving 2 slots empty to expand to 64Gb later)
512Gb-1Tb internal hd
2. Should I be considering the 8 core? I'm not too excited about the additional $1500, but I want a system that will last.
3. Is getting the two 16Gb chips of ram and leaving two slots empty a bad idea?
4. I currently work with FCP studio 2 and love it. Not sure whether to go with FCP X, or adobe. Any thoughts?
5. I'm not finding many deals for cheaper ram and hard drives. OWC's prices seem to be comparable to Mac's. I want to do the ram so I have room to upgrade to 64Gb later, but are there any hard drives out there that would make it worth upgrading it myself?
I appreciate any insights you might have. I plan on getting a decent raid and 4k monitor in the next year or so, but for now just want a base system that will keep me editing and will be ready for 4k when I take that next step.

The late 2013 Mc Pro uses Intel Xeon ECC processors (error correction), and as far as I know Intel has not announced any newer Intel Xeon processors than those in the late 2013 Mac Pro. I would not expect to see an update to the 2013 Mac Pro until the end of 2015 at the earliest and probably later than that.
If time is not an issue, then you should be quite happy with the 6 core 2013 Mac Pro. It will do an excellent job with 4K video footage. And, yes, I would suggest getting the best raid system you can afford. That is actually more important than processor speed since I/O is frequently the bottleneck when doing multi camera video or 4K video.
I have the latest version of Adobe's Premiere Pro 2014 CC installed on my late 2013 Mac Pro and i have used it a bit without problems. However, I find it much much slower to edit with than FCP X. Also be advised that if you Google you will find several individuals on the Adobe Forums who purchased the late 2013 Mac Pro and have not been able to use it with Premiere Pro CC because of either a hardware incompatibility or software issues between Premiere Pro CC and BMD's Resolve. It is quite possible that I have not experienced these problems because I have not made very demanding projects with Premiere Pro CC on my 2013 Mac Pro.
I strongly recommend FCP X. Apple released FCP X before it was ready, and many early users were unwilling to take the time to learn how to use this very different NLE which is not track based. Apple has over the last 3 years since FCP X was released, issued more than 10 updates (all free), and the program is stable and blazingly fast. I urge you to check out the FCP X training offered by Ripple Training and/or Larry Jordan. Both are inexpensive, and worth every cent. Watch their training videos and you will be up to speed in FCP X in no time at all, and you will wish you had switched a long time ago.
If you can afford the 1 TB of PCie internal flash storage on your Mac Pro, then by all means get it. For me 1TB is well worth the cost.
As far as editing 4K video, the format of the video will be important to the ease of editing. For example, I am able to edit in its native format (XVAC S) several streams of 4K video form my Sony FDR-AX100 with no problems. If I were editing Sony's XVAC format used in their professional 4K cameras, that might pose a problem that would require transcoding. Similarly for other 4K formats. XVAC S is an easy format to edit natively because it is essentially a high bit rate h.264 format.
Best of luck on whatever you decide to do, and happy editing.
Tom

Help or tips on config new Mac Pro hard drives

Been saving for over a year and just bought a new Mac pro. The day after MacWorld with no upgrade announced ☹.
My configuration is the 2x 2.8Gh quad-core processors, 2 GB of RAM, ATI Graphic card (standard), and a 1TB hard drive in the first hard drive bay.
I am upgrading for the original 1 processor G5 (sounds so slow now). I am planning on taking my 1TB hard drive from that machine which contains my entire iTunes library, and its full! Mostly of legally ripped DVDs and TV shows.
I am planning on configuring my hard drives like so.
Drive Bay 1: 1TB drive, I am considering partition it so there are about 400 gigs on a boot drive for applications and libraries and using the other 400 or so gigs left over as a drop box for things from my over full iTunes hard drive. (TV shows which have ended, so the tags won’t be changed)
Drive Bay 2: 1TB, or 500 gigs depending on the price I get for a hard drive. If it’s a 1TB I will just have it mirror the drive in bay 1. If its 500 gigs, I will have the iTunes “drop box” mirrored in drive 2 and use my time capsule to back up the OS, applications and libraries.
Drive 3 will be my currently full TB hard drive from my current machine and drive 4 will be a TB drive as an exact mirror for back up purposes.
Can I set up these mirrors I want with time machine? Also I have never partitioned a drive, I know you can do it in disk utility, is it a pretty self-explanatory process?
Is this set up of drives a good idea? A RAID seems too costly and just too much since I am not worried about response times of the drives, as long as my media plays properly I am generally happy. I do some work in PS and FCE but not enough to warrant percent scratch disks and RAIDed drives. I also read about a back up program called SuperDuper but it seems like time machine can do anything I would need super duper to do so is it worth the 30 bucks.
Also I have never used migration assistant, is that fairly painless or am I better off just syncing what I can with Mobile Me, and brining the rest of the things I need over VIA external hard drive? (Documents and pictures and such)
I haven’t gotten a new Mac in 5 years so are there any other tips you recommend when setting up my OS? I read somewhere to create an Admin profile that you never use for log in, and than your own profile? Just simple things like that. I have been browsing my old Macworld magazines looking for small tips!
Well thank you for reading my long post! I am super excited about this Mac to ship in 2-4 days I even shelled out for next day shipping so I didn’t have to want any longer than I needed to.
Thanks in advance.

I've had my MP just a few months, and like you I've filled the drive bays in no time.
I keep on top of things using two pieces of software;
CarbonCopyCloner - this runs two nightly 'incremental' bootable Clones of my OSX/iTunes/iPhoto 'System' HD, one to an internal drive, one to an external FW800 D2.
ChronoSync - This I use for everything else, work in progress & archives etc - During and towards the end of my jobs (I'm a photographer), I will use ChronoSync to perform perfectly synced Backups to external FW800 D2s and will soon be purchasing a NewerTech Voyager Q to facilitate the use of bare HDs for rotational backups.
Time Machine isn't a program I've looked into and frankly the way I work doesn't really require that 'Archive' backup style.

New Mac Pro for Photoshop

Hi,
I currently have a 2008 Mac Pro 2 x 2.8 Quad Core Intel Xeon that I am thinking of upgrading.
My questions are as follows.
Which set up would be best for photography based work, mainly Photoshops CS6 and Lightroom 4
I use a Drobo as my main working raid style hard drive.
I'm happy to spend money on a quality system but want to know it will be optimum for what I am using and dont want to just go for the 'top of the range' if it is pointless for the type of work I am doing (I never use video software at all)
Would there be a 3rd party company that would be better suited to set it up exactly for photography based work.
Am I right in saying the current Mac Pro's do not have thunderbolt or USB 3.0, so with that in mind, how long do people speculate that the new Mac Pro's will be available.
Thanks in advance.
Jason

YOU can see what Intel says (said?) at the Intel Conference this fall where they lay out for their vendors and everyonne what they plan and have in the oven for the next year.
Intel fell behind last year's plans with the complexity and issues they ran into, plus changes in the landscape. So did Nvidia with their new line. Hence everyone's plans went bonkers. And any IvyBridge Xeon? doesn't look like anything until this time next year, end of 2013. 2014 does have the next tic-toc and improved chips and memory architecture. DDR4 may get out of the labs.
That much is knowable.
But what you can do today: 2010 6-core 3.33 w/ 4x8GB and GTX 670 plus some nice storage hardware.
See this guy's articles and advice, a heavy graphics perspective:
www.macperformanceguide.com
Oh, and just my own personal.... a lot of 2008 owners are not happy campers for various reasons with power, stabilty, sleep/wake/freezes and maybe that 'first Mac Pro w/ EFI64" is showing crack in seams.
2010 for $1800 and up to around $3k - and your system is worth over a grand still once you can move over.

New Mac Pro - Config for graphics?

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