on 2013-02-17 17:16 Godfrey DiGiorgi wrote
On Sun, Feb 17, 2013 at 3:34 PM, Steve Cottrell <[email protected]> wrote:
On 17/2/13, Godfrey DiGiorgi, discombobulated, unleashed:
What do you really need a Mac Pro 8-core for? My brother uses one of
those but he does real-time work (video/audio editing - it's his
business: http://www.headlinestudios.net/Headline_Studios.html) which
is orders of magnitude more demanding than still photography work.
You say that but I know at least one editor who uses a Mac mini -
admittedly it's out on the road in a satellite van but he swears by it!
Oh, I believe the Mac mini is powerful enough to do the editing job.
But the ProTools software that Joe uses has dedicated cards that talk
to fast external drives, it requires the slots in the Mac Pro. The
next rev of the software will likely remove that constraint and use
the Thunderbolt interface to faster storage hardware.
used Mac Pros are generally the price/performance leader when a bit of
expansion is contemplated and/or when the GPU is important (Lightroom 4 doesn't
use a Mac GPU, though, afaik); otherwise a Mini can do a lot for the money
they may not work for ProTools, but there are external PCI chassis that connect
via Thunderbolt, and i wouldn't be surprised to see OWC put its PCI-based
storage system (faster than SATA) into a Thunderbolt box soon; these will bring
a lot more top-end expansion potential to Minis and iMacs
all the Thunderbolt stuff is expensive, though, compared to slapping drives and
cards into free slots in a Mac Pro; also, i think Thunderbolt maxes out at just
over half the potential throughput of PCI
so the best choice is "it depends"; if performance is a major concern, there
are resources to help weigh the factors, e.g.:
<http://www.barefeats.com/minivmp.html>
<http://www.barefeats.com/minivim.html>
i had to replace an old laptop acting as a server this month, and size, power
consumption and noise were important to me, so i got a used 2011 Mac Mini
(2.5GHz i5, discrete graphics); it has 9 months warranty remaining and cost me
$430; aside from some of the 2011 models, all the other Minis have "integrated
graphics", which perform poorly on GPU tasks (see above links)
this server replaces a dying 2007 MacBook Pro, and runs iTunes, FileMaker
Server, ScanSnap and backups; though the Mini it is still slower than my 2011
MacBook Pro (better GPU & 1GB VRAM), the GPU on the mini should make a big
difference if i offload some Aperture work to it, or if my laptop has some downtime
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