Dan Knight
- 2006.08.16
Wow, a lot of feedback on The
Mac Pro Value Equation: Where's the Sweet Spot? - Tip Jar
Cuts to the Chase
Dan Martin succinctly says:
Wow! Cuts to the chase. Thank you.
Mac Pro Memory
Daniel Decker writes:
You mention "...and for best performance RAM should be installed
in matched pairs...."
Actually, you have no choice, RAM must be installed in
matched pairs on the Mac Pro, ideally from the same vendor. It's in
the system requirements.
As always, keep up the exemplary work; LEM is an invaluable
resource.
Daniel Decker
Thanks for pointing this out, Dan. I missed it in
my reading. I've updated the article and the Mac Pro profile to
include this.
Dan
G5 or MacPro?
Scott Areman says:
Dan,
I have read your value columns with interest. I am trying to do
decide whether it is better to buy a dual 1.8 or 2.0 G5 or to buy
one of the new Mac Pros. I'm a photographer who has been using a
1.25 GHz PowerBook for three years.
I'm doing more Photoshop work and image viewing now, and coupled
with the 47.5 MB files that come out of my Canon 1DS Mark II
camera, the PowerBook seems slow. I'm usually conservative about
spending money on the latest and greatest technology. However, the
price of the base Mac Pro seems a good value compared to the prices
that G5s are still going for on eBay. I've seen dual 2.0 G5's
selling for $1,500-2,000. Is there something I'm missing?
But also I've noticed that upgrade items like RAM are much
cheaper for the G5s than the Mac Pro.
So any advice or suggestions you have would be welcome.
Best regards,
Scott Areman
Scott, I can tell you up front that the Mac Pro
will run circles around your 1.25 GHz PowerBook G4 for Photoshop.
The entry-level model has four 2.0 GHz Intel cores, which is
probably 6-8x the raw horsepower of the G4 CPU in your 'Book. Even
if the Rosetta PowerPC "emulator" uses 75% of the processing power
(which is a ridiculously high estimate), you're going to be running
Photoshop 50% to 100% faster.
Add to this the wide, fast data bus and the fast
SATA hard drives, and the Mac Pro may give you 3-4x the performance
using the current version of Photoshop - and probably more than
double that when Photoshop goes universal binary in 2007.
For the small difference in price, I recommend the
2.66 GHz Mac Pro over the 2.0 GHz model - 33% more processing power
for just US$300 (13% more).
Yes, RAM for the Mac Pro is expensive right now,
since there aren't a lot of computers on the market that use this
type of chip yet. Over time they're bound to become more
affordable, and your best bet might be to order a 2 GB
configuration now and add additional RAM (if you feel you need it)
when prices reach your comfort range.
Dan
Final Cut Pro Benchmarks
Mitch writes:
Hi Dan,
Even with a dual processor Power Mac G4/1 GHz, it
can take hours and hours and hours to apply color correction to a
one-hour video in iMovie.
I'm guessing that a 2.0-2.3 GHz dual-core G5 would
cut that time in half, the G5 Quad would half that again, and that
for a project like this the four core 3.0 GHz Mac Pro might half
that once again. Ballpark figure, I'd estimate 6-10x faster for
this kind of thing.
Thought you might be interested in the following FCP [Final Cut
Pro] test someone at 2-pop
compiled a few years ago.
(FCP 2.0 or higher, render files sent to an internal HD.) Place
a 10 second clip (DV25) on the timeline and apply a Gaussian blur
with a setting (radius) of 25. Cut the clip in half and apply a 5
second cross dissolve on the cut. Time from the click of "Render
All" to the point at which the render status window disappears.
The Results
- G3 SP 300 4:45
- G3 SP 350 4:35
- G3 SP 400 (Blue and White) 4:06
- G3 SP 350 (w/ G4 550 ZIF Upgrade) 1:45
- G4 SP 400 1:40
- G4 SP 800 (iMac) 1:25
- G4 SP 450 (OS9.2.2/QT5) 1:21, 1:16
- " (OS10.1.5/QT6) 1:12
- PB Ti/667 (1st generation) 1:12, 1:21, 2:05, 2:30
- PB Ti/500 (Rev. A) 1:11, 1:12,1:15
- G4 SP 500 1:10
- G4 SP 733 (Original ver./not Quicksilver) 1:08
- G4 SP 533 1:05
- G4 SP 867 (Quicksilver) :49
- G4 DP 450 :47
- G4 DP 500 :40
- G4 DP 533 :39
- G4 DP 800 :37
- G4 DP 1 GHz (Quicksilver) :28, :29, :30
- G4 DP 1 GHz (DDR RAM) (OS X 10.2.1) :28
- G4 DP 1.42 GHz (OS X w/FCP 3.0.4 : :20, :19, :19
(used the second hand on the clock, so it's probably +/- 1
second)
- G5 DP 2.0 12 seconds
Best wishes,
Mitch
Thanks for the data, Mitch. It shows a dual 2.0
GHz G5 is roughly 2.5x as fast as my dual 1.0 GHz G4 setup, even
better than I would have predicted. With the shift to dual-core
CPUs, we'd gain a bit more efficiency, and with two dual-core CPUs
running at 2.5 GHz, we'd double that.
Based on these guesstimates, I'm thinking a G5
Quad would be about 6x as fast as my dual G4. Wow! And the Mac Pro
should be even more powerful, with a faster 2.66 or 3.0 GHz CPU,
although I haven't seen any extensive Final Cut Pro benchmarks yet.
Bare Feats shows that applying the Soft Focus effect in iMovie is
about 50% faster (2.5 GHz G5 Quad vs. 2.66 GHz Mac Pro).
Soft Modems
Jeremy writes:
Dear Mr. Knight:
In one of your recent articles (on the new Mac Pro, I think),
you briefly adverted to the Mac USB modem as an appropriate
low-cost add-on for those in need of fax capability. Might you
address this:
Several blogs refer negatively to the Mac modem, calling it a
"software" modem, slow and clunky. Of all the larger modem
manufacturers, only Zoom seems to continue to make a stout USB
hardware faxmodem for the Mac. But the most recent review of that
device that I could find was about 5 years old. Do you know whether
that faxmodem would offer any improvement on Apple's, and whether
it would work with the newer operating systems? Is there any other
"better" faxmodem that you would recommend?
Thanks,
Jeremy
Unfortunately, Apple decided to go with "soft"
modems years ago. In the old days, the modem itself had all the
hardware onboard, and all the computer did was send commands to the
modem and send/receive data through it. With soft modems, the
computer does all the hard work of data compression.
This has also been the norm in the Windows world,
where "Winmodems" offer equally mediocre, CPU sapping performance.
Why? Because it's cheaper.
I have to admit to not being anywhere close to
abreast to the world of modems. 56k modems are a mature and, by
now, boring technology. I'm not at all surprised that most of the
industry has gone the way of cheap, and I couldn't tell you if Zoom
or anyone else makes a real hardware modem for USB Macs.
Dan
Dan Knight has been publishing Low
End Mac since April 1997. Mailbag columns come from email responses to his Mac Musings, Mac Daniel, Online Tech Journal, and other columns on the site.
