Computer Upgrade Advice

...where the image itself is stored should have very little impact on processing time.

Thanks so much! I used to use LR & PS, but my versions were quite old. When I saw the costs of fresh software (now that I'm retired), I looked around for open source alternatives and found FastStone, GIMP, and RAWTherapee. I could be wrong, but loading times are sufficiently long to suggest to me that they're coming from the HDs. I edit in GIMP & RT but export the files to preserve the originals. I did love LR & PS, but I got used to GIMP pretty quickly & it does the job for me.

 

If SSDs in my NAS won't improve performance, I'll be very happy to put the $ into something a bit more enjoyable!! :)

Thanks so much! I used to use LR & PS, but my versions were quite old. When I saw the costs of fresh software (now that I'm retired), I looked around for open source alternatives and found FastStone, GIMP, and RAWTherapee. I could be wrong, but loading times are sufficiently long to suggest to me that they're coming from the HDs. I edit in GIMP & RT but export the files to preserve the originals. I did love LR & PS, but I got used to GIMP pretty quickly & it does the job for me.

 

I, too, am retired and I am an amateur photographer - i.e. I take pictures for my personal enjoyment. I use Photoshop CS5 and Lightroom 6 - the perpetual license version, not the CC version. When these finally "give up the ghost", I am not quite sure what I will do, but I will not use the Adobe subscription model; it is not cost effective for me.

 

I did not mean to imply that storing your images on SSD will not speed up your processing; it will speed up the image load time. However, I find that load and save time are a very small percentage of the time I spend working on the image. If I spend ten minutes editing the image, an extra 30 seconds loading the image is not a problem - unless you process hundreds of images a day. It is a matter of cost/benefit. Only you can decide what is right for you.

 

If SSDs in my NAS won't improve performance, I'll be very happy to put the $ into something a bit more enjoyable!!

 

More enjoyable than taking images and sitting in front of a computer and processing them? Heresy!!! Next you will be telling me that Google is not ALWAYS right! People have been burned at the stake for less! <HUGE GRIN>

 

Good luck with your updated computer. Enjoy.

People have been burned at the stake for less!

As long as I don't get burned by the steak, I'll be fine...

The dream of computer upgrade goes back to the beginning when people were getting S100 bus (link) machines so they could "upgrade"

 

It remains a dream.

 

For the most part, you just need to buy a whole new computer each generation. If you're very lucky your old software may decide to work.

Edited August 31, 2018 by JDMvW

Unlike the computer you bought in 2008 today's desktop PC's have a much longer production life because hardware has evolved much faster than software demands. I'm running a 5yr old i7, and with 16GB or RAM, $100 video card and SSD for the OS runs as fast as I need it and will support any display I desire. Unless you're chewing through 4k video editing you really don't need the latest and greatest desktop, and like new refurb i7's can be had for a steal. This is one reason why profits in the Desktop computer industry are declining so fast, and that's because you can legitimately get 5-7 years out productivity out of a desktop.

 

I use an SSD for my OS and Apps and regular spinners for bulk data. As SSD prices continue to dive soon that will change.

Everything is out of date in an 8 year old computer. More memory, a faster graphics card, new processor - all add up to a strain on the power supply and mother board. You will be nagged by other failures, including cooling fans and other parts which may prove hard to obtain. Furthermore with a Windows machine, you will be bugged mercilessly to upgrade to the latest version of Windows 10.

 

I pulled the plug on Windows two years ago and bought an iMac and two MacBookPro's (I need a backup for recording), and I'm not looking back. You do get prompted to upgrade OS X from time to time, but very mildly compared to Win 10 nagware. Wait until update #3 and you're good to go. Most, if not all, applications are vetted by Apple, and far less expensive than Windows applications, so you don't get caught in the usual web of incompatibilities (aka DLL Hell). I have 12 TB of external Thunderbolt drives, which are tucked into OS X so tightly they might as well be inside the chassis.

I pulled the plug on Windows two years ago and bought an iMac and two MacBookPro's (I need a backup for recording), and I'm not looking back.

 

There are still switchers? I was sure everyone who was susceptible to switching PC platforms had done so long ago, because there is so little innovation on either side.

 

Myself would really like to have one of those iMac Pros to run Lightroom on. The 2013 iMac is still doing fine, but I do have to wait a bit for Lightroom to finish rendering 1:1 previews for my imports. To our Never Mac friends who would say that you can build a Windows machine for $800 that will cut through 36 or 45 megapixel raw files like a buzz saw through butter, I will say that until you have really used a Mac extensively, you are somewhat insensible to the advantages. ;)

Everything is out of date in an 8 year old computer. More memory, a faster graphics card, new processor

 

My Mac Pro 5,1(2010) might disagree with that statement...

 

2x 6-core 3.06ghz processors, 32gb RAM, PCIe SSDs, and a Radeon 5770. The Radeon is SERIOUSLY outdated, but I haven't upgraded it because I want to continue running OS X Snow Leopard on the computer so that I can run Nikon Scan.

 

Even at that, my mid-2012 non-Retina MacBook Pro(quad 2.3ghz, 16gb RAM, nVidia 650M 512mb, 1tb Samsung Evo SSD) trucks along quite happily in macOS High Sierra with Lightroom 6 and processing files from my D800.

My Mac Pro 5,1(2010) might disagree with that statement...

 

 

My Dell Precisions running that same 5675 processor and long since retired might strongly disagree with the ROI of hysterically over priced Mac Pro. I also think a lot of Mac users screwed into the rock and a hard place choice of that Mac Pro or vastly under powered Core Duo based iMac would disagree with you as well and have never forgiven Apple for treating them as open wallets.

 

Dual socket workstations are a joke.....I don't even like using them for VMware or Hyper-V clusters because horizontal scaling is more cost effective than vertical.

 

The 5675 processor also has the same per thread performance as an AMD A6, which you can only find in low end budget systems. The benefit of moving to a processor with a per thread sysmark of at least 2000 is the difference between night and day in terms of server or desktop performance. Doesn't matter what OS is running - scheduling is the same, and having lots of low powered cores doesn't make applications faster.

I have heard that Mac Pro computers are bulletproof, so I'm inclined to believe a 2010 version still chugs. At least they can be upgraded, with Apple's blessing over components and compatibility. The only thing I could (and did) add to my iMac 27" was 32 G of RAM.

 

My recently retired HP 8-core Xeon Workstation was "upgraded" many times over the years (since 2010), but in the end things kept failing faster than I could manage. USB devices never ran better than 25% of the speed I get out of the iMac, and FireWire wasn't much better. My Thinkpad ran faster and cooler.

 

Major programs, like Adobe CC, loaded and ran flawlessly. Other programs were replaced with OS X analogs, like character recognition (FineReader) and disc burning (Toast). Even my old disk arrays, formatted NTFS, work just fine using "NTFS for Mac."

My Mac Pro indeed seems to be bulletproof, or at least I can upgrade it or easily replace failed components. However, I read that the next OS, Mojave, will only work in a 2010 Mac Pro if I replace the Radeon 5770 GPU with a "Metal compatible GPU". And, even if I replace the GPU, it will not run my Microsoft Office 2011, and who knows about running my Photoshop CS5, and other old software that I rely upon. Therefore, I will continue to run High Sierra as the OS for at least as long as security updates are available. Edited September 17, 2018 by Glenn McCreery

I signed up for Microsoft Office 365. I can run it on up to 5 machines for $100/year. Words can't describe Office 365 as a MAC word processor, at least not words you can use in public. Unfortunately, Word and Excel are must-have programs in the business world.

I have heard that Mac Pro computers are bulletproof, so I'm inclined to believe a 2010 version still chugs. At least they can be upgraded, with Apple's blessing over components and compatibility. The only thing I could (and did) add to my iMac 27" was 32 G of RAM.

 

Yes, that is indeed the strength of the "classic" Mac Pro platform. Mine will outperform the late 2013(6,1, AKA the "trash can") in all but GPU speed, and I could easily drop in a GPU that would beat what's in the 6,1. BTW, the main boot drive in mine actually came from a 6,1-I just needed a ~$10 mPCIe to PCIe card from China to have it working at full speed.

 

BTW, I bought mine well used, and have thrown some money at upgrading it. I spend around $350 for a base dual CPU model, but was tolerant of a bit of case damage(read-looks like was run over by a truck). $600 is a more typical price for a dual CPU 5,1(singles run $400). The next upgrade will be a set of Xeon X5690s, which are hex core 3.66ghz.

 

In any case, Apple actually made an unprecedented move with the MP 5,1s. It officially supports Mojave with an upgraded Metal-capable GPU, and they have endorsed the RX 580 as the "official" route(although there are a long list of others that will work). Although there's always been a strong "hacking" culture at least among many hard-core Apple hardware guys of getting unsupported OSs to run(some are as simple as bypassing installer checks, while others can involve re-writing the kernel and transplanting kexts from other versions, and in many cases getting unsupported OSs running is dependent on hardware upgrades) but this is the first time Apple has officially endorsed any kind of upgrade. To me, it speaks volumes to how much of a let-down the 6,1 was.

My Dell Precisions running that same 5675 processor and long since retired might strongly disagree with the ROI of hysterically over priced Mac Pro. I also think a lot of Mac users screwed into the rock and a hard place choice of that Mac Pro or vastly under powered Core Duo based iMac would disagree with you as well and have never forgiven Apple for treating them as open wallets.

 

At least in terms of image processing, how did you find the X5675 lacking? As I said, two of them handle 36mp RAW files fine, but then so does the 3615QM i7 in my laptop. The dual X5675s handle my 4x5 scans(6200dpi-you do the math on the size) like they're nothing also.

 

I won't argue that having 12 cores on one die is more efficient than 12 spread across two dies(or even having multiple dies shoved right next to each other like in C2Q processors and the related Xeons), but none the less in 2010 you needed two dies to get 12 cores. It's hard for me to buy that in a properly multi-threaded program, 12 cores would not perform better than 6.

 

Also, I bought my Mac Pro used-not new.

Therefore, I will continue to run High Sierra as the OS for at least as long as security updates are available.

 

Mojave is set to drop in October. If recent trends hold true, you can reasonably expect security updates for High Sierra through August or September of 2020. Third party web browsers like FireFox and Chrome will likely continue building for High Sierra a fair bit longer-or at least as long as Xcode supports it.

 

We're about a year out of support for Firefox 45 ESR, which is the most up-to-date browser for OS X Snow Leopard. The last Apple security update was in 2012 or 2013, I think(although there was a random update to the app store 2016ish that made it possible to download newer versions of OS X/macOS). That's ~4 years past the end of Apple support to still have a secure mainstream browser. Ironically, we have an even more up-to-date Mozilla fork called TenFourFox that runs on 10.4 and 10.5(and will also run in 10.6 under Rosetta). Unfortunately, it is increasingly handicapped as the developer has had to completely kill some features in the name of security. Still, I have no qualms about doing things like online banking in OS X 10.4 running TenFourFox(although I don't do it-mostly because my bank's website is too heavy to use comfortably on a G4).

Ben - thanks for all the good information.

My Dell Precisions running that same 5675 processor and long since retired might strongly disagree with the ROI of hysterically over priced Mac Pro. I also think a lot of Mac users screwed into the rock and a hard place choice of that Mac Pro or vastly under powered Core Duo based iMac would disagree with you as well and have never forgiven Apple for treating them as open wallets.

 

I don't mean to keep coming back to this, but I'm still scratching my head as to what Scott Eaton is even talking about.

 

First of all, Apple only used CoreDuo CPUs for a short time after they first started shipping commercial Intel Macs(as a side note, the first Intel Macs shipped used Pentium 4s). The Mac Pro was the final "piece" of the Intel transition, and all other computers were either shipping with C2Ds when the first generation MP started shipping, or would transition to a C2D within a short time of its introduction. So, there was no real "forcing" people to buy a Mac Pro if they wanted a C2D Mac.

 

By the time the Mac Pro 5,1 was out, Apple was transitioning most other computers to Core i5 or i7s and the entire range would be there within a year(although the Mac Pro 4,1, 2009, did use core i based Xeons).

 

And, again, I'd like to know what Scott Eaton found lacking in his X5675 for photo processing. Looking up single thread performance and declaring a low-end AMD processor "better" is ludicrous. The X5675 still kills the referenced AMD processor in multi-core performance. It has a quite a bit less cache(which contributes to the overall "feel" of how fast a processor is), and unlike the Xeon it lacks any kind of turbo boost. Also, bear in mind that the X5675 supports hyperthreading, which can boost the performance in programs that can take advantage of it. Real world benchmarks show that it runs CPU-heavy applications significantly faster. There again, in my Mac Pro, I have two of them. This also isn't the highest performance processor that will work in a Mac Pro 4,1/5,1-the X5677(quad 3.46ghz) offers much better single thread performance, while the X5690 gives the same single thread performance as the X5677 but is a hex core processor.