Hi! And welcome to the forums!
i am a photographer and I have a macbook pro but i am looking to buy a mac pro as my business is expanding. Whilst i love my macbook Pro it is struggling to process the files at speed from my new Canon Mark 11. I work a lot in aperture and regularly handle 1000 plus Raw images.
Any advice on the new Mac pro specs that i would need would be welcome (quad/8 core, Ram size, Hard drives etc?)
Also just wondered if extra hard drives were easy too install?
Ok, before you do anything - find what the software you are using recommends - not requires, recommends. I know aperature recommends at least 2 gigs on a mac pro
Some programs can be a bit misleading about amount of ram you might need - in your case, you already know your current laptop is struggling - I'd run your program and do your work, and us the system utilities to see how much ram, swap and processor power you are using.
Personally, I wouldn't buy a mac pro with anything less then both processor slots filled. Even if you don't need 8 cores right now, if at some point you do need it, well - it's one of the upgrades on a mac pro I wouldn't want to do. For one thing - unless something has drastically changed, the processors need to be matched. This is all assuming that the single processor form of the mac pro has 2 processor sockets. Also, I've seen the docs on getting to the processor sockets - it doesn't look like fun.
Ram - well, if you're buying a brand new Mac Pro with the xeons that are based on the i7 technology (the 2009 mac pros), you will want to get a configuration that uses 3 or 6 ram chips as i7 technology is (at least for the standard i7 chips, and I can only imagine the same for the xeons based on it) designed to do triple channel (this also seems to pan out as the default configs of the new mac pros come with 3 or 6 sticks of ram). if you get 4 or 8 ram chips, you're stuck back at dual channel which won't transfer as much data per cycle. If you get an older Mac Pro, it's dual channel. Unless you have a bunch of photos open at once, I can't imagine you needing more then 6gig (the base config on the dual processor version 2009 model) right now. Even if you did - it's cheaper to buy elsewhere, and it's an easy upgrade.
Hard drives - they are probably some of the easiest to add/swap that I have seen. No cables, just pull out a carrier, screw the drive into the carrier, slide the carrier back into place, done (of course, do it with the comp off
). I was quite used to adding hard drives on regular pc's and fighting with where to put the drive and screwing it in and running cables. When I first got my mac pro, I planned to swap out one of the 320gig drives with a 1tb drive, I was quite surprised and pleased with how easy and quick it was.
RAM and HD are extremely easy upgrades on a mac pro.
As you're just doing photo work, probably any video card will do fine (ie: the default GT120) If you were planning some hard core gaming, I'd say go the 4870 (or the 8800gt if you were going with a 2008 mac pro)
I did some surfing comparing quad core to 8 core with aperature, and it seems that aperature will benefit from more cores.
JMHO
