How to Select and Configure a Mac Pro
Be sure to read How To Choose a Mac for overall tips and ideas on selecting and buying a Mac.
Mac Pro advantages
My top recommendation for photographers, media professionals and other demanding tasks is the Apple Mac Pro.
There are multiple reasons for this:
- Ergonomics: the Mac Pro is about as quiet as it gets, and all its memory, hard drives, etc are easily accessible without tools. It is aesthetically pleasing also, fitting into even “hip” offices, especially in Redmond.
- Massive, fast storage: The Mac Pro accommodates four internal drives for 6TB of internal storage (4 X 1.5TB) , and with a special bracket as much as 9TB, all using the built-in SATA connectors. That storage is also performance-scalable: speeds of 600MB/sec are possible with 6 drives. (Eight drives is also possible with an internal SATA expansion card by eliminating the upper DVD drive, not recommended).
- Memory expansion: the Mac Pro accepts up to 32GB of memory (16GB for the single-CPU Mac Pro Nehalem).
- CPU cores: There are 8 virtual cores (single CPU) or 16 virtual cores (dual CPU) capable of high performance for applications such as video editing and/or running multiple programs simultaneously.
- Apple’s Mac OS X is the best operating system available today, offering state-of-the-art usability and reliability, and avoiding pitfalls like rampant viruses. See (PC or Mac—Making a Sensible Choice).
Recommended configurations PERMALINK
You’re buying a Mac Pro for performance, so dispense with the idea of having 4GB of memory and/or just one hard drive! If that’s sufficient, an iMac can handle the job, albeit with truncated future potential (“dead end Mac”).
Get the smallest, cheapest hard disk offered (they are all 7200rpm), because it will ideally be only a system/applications drive. It’s a throw-away drive, you can buy a fast 1TB drive for under $100. See Setting Up Your Mac for the reasoning on this.
Get the minimum amount of RAM offered (until and unless Apple comes to its senses on memory pricing). You can add much more memory at far lower cost on your own.
A higher performance video card isn’t really necessary any more because even the standard one is terrific. Hard-core gamers and video professionals should still look into the fastest possible video card, but most tasks won’t see any difference from the “faster” card.
Since multiple cores remain underutilized, stick with the single-CPU model (quad-core or hexacore).
Best performance and value
Shown below are recommended configurations (best value). If money is not a primary concern, go for the fastest dual-CPU system.
After buying, add memory and hard drives. Consider refurbished models at 8-15% off. Don’t forget that for demanding tasks, memory and disk speed must be appropriate for the task. See Optimizing Photoshop.
The examples below are as of late June 2009. While options and prices may change slightly, the principles remain the same, so mentally adjust accordingly if the models here are updated.
The wildcard is how much Apple’s forthcoming Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) improves performance of dual-CPU machines, as well as future software updates by Adobe and others. Keep in mind that a faster clock speed processor is always faster, but a dual-CPU system is sometimes faster— task dependent. In fact, a single 2.93GHz system is faster than a dual 2.93GHz system in some cases (system overhead). That could change with Snow Leopard and/or future software upgrades.
The other downside of a single-CPU Mac Pro Nehalem system is a limit of 16GB memory, but the vast majority of users will find that ample— even those working with Photoshop and Lightroom and similar programs.
A single-CPU 2.66GHz model is your best bang for the buck, about $800 less than a dual-CPU 2.26GHz system, and it will still run faster on many tasks.
For another $500 (20% more), you can get a 10% faster processor at 2.93GHz, a just-noticeable difference. Or you can take that $500 and use it for 12GB of memory at OWC (at the time this was written). Or you could use it for three or four enterprise-grade hard drives.
For video or intensive photo processing, the next step up is a dual-CPU system. However, most users will see superior performance with a single-CPU 2.93Ghz system over a slower clock rate dual-CPU system.
There are scenarios when for the very fastest model make sense: when time is truly money. A photographic studio contacted me for advice on their issue: slow Photoshop opening and saving files. This problem was affecting the studio’s ability to process a large number of image files on a daily basis. Clearly, the fastest dual-CPU system is in order, but my advice was more practical: use a striped RAID and save as uncompressed TIF, good for up to 20X faster performance!
Contact Lloyd Chambers.
Adding memory
See All About Mac Pro Memory for memory details on 2008 and earlier Mac Pro, and the Mac Pro Nehalem review for 2009 Mac Pro. Photoshop users should be sure to read Optimizing Photoshop and Lightroom users Optimizing Lightroom.
Adequate memory is the name of the game: you cannot have too much, though you can have too little. Too little can slow things down substantially, making the slowest model perform not too differently from the fastest one. Photoshop users can determine how much is enough by looking at scratch file sizes How.
Anyone using Photoshop or other memory-intensive applications should consider investing immediately in 16GB of memory. It’s a modest fraction of the total system cost. If a subsequent upgrade to 32GB is a possibility, then get the 4 X 4GB kit instead, which will occupy four slots, leaving the remaining four slots available for future use.
Note that 32GB makes sense only for specific use-cases — there are no mainstream 64-bit programs that can make use of it (that may change in late 2009). However, Photoshop users working with enormous files can benefit substantially.
Adding hard drives
Advanced solutions include SAS and SCSI; these are not covered here. Standard SATA drives offer superb value and performance for the money; other alternatives are much more expensive and/or lower capacity.
Photoshop users should be sure to read Optimizing Photoshop. Also read Why you need more space than you need and Hard Drive Speed Factors. Larger (1TB) hard drives aren’t just about storage capacity: it’s about performance.
Note that general benchmarks for hard drives are of limited use. Only testing specific workloads will tell you whether a brand/model of hard drive is optimal for your particular work. Extensive research has been done in this area for you in Optimizing Photoshop.
See the Recommended Hardware page for specific hard drive recommendations (and more).
