SPEED: new rMBP vs 2012 Mac Pro

[vincmo]

Hi guys! Quick question here:

Looking to upgrade from my Mac Pro and go mobile.

Currently using a 2012 Mac Pro Quad 3.2 with 12gb 1066 ram and 1gb and ATI HD 5770 1gb.

Will a top of the line new rMBP (2.6ghz, 16gb 1600 ram and nvidia 750m 2gb) equal or beat the performances I get from the 2012 Mac Pro under Photoshop (big digital paintings, around 5000 pixels by 2500).

Looking forward to hear from you guys! Cheers!

 

[Breedlove]

Fact 1: My 5 year old gaming desktop runs circles around any of the new rMBPs, even the fully specced 15" rMBP.

Fact 2: My 5 year old gaming desktop compared to your Mac Pro is a Subaru compared to a Ferrari.

Fact 3: Because my computer beats any of the rMBPs and your Mac Pro beats my computer, your Mac Pro will trounce any of the rMBPs today. So no, a fully specced out rMBP will not come close to your Mac Pro and alas, this is the price to be paid for portability.

Fact 4: You don't need a Ferrari to commute to work. Similarly, you don't need a Mac Pro to do the kind of work you're doing in PhotoShop. I'm fairly certain that in going mobile, you won't notice a performance hit in your intended usage.

Fact 5: If your work involves computer benchmarking or virtualization or serious compiling or any other CPU intensive task, you will notice the difference between your Mac Pro and the rMBP like night and day. Your Mac Pro will perform nearly twice as well as the best rMBP today in such situations.

Fact 6: As you have mentioned, your work is not the sort that will seriously tax a well-specced rMBP and you won't miss much by going mobile.

Fact 7: You won't notice a difference.

Fact 8: You'd be smart to buy a rMBP and go mobile. Sell your Mac Pro and keep the display for when you are not out and about.

 

[vincmo]

Breedlove, I like your style! Straight to the point.

There is only one thing that matters to me and it's speed in Photoshop.

Any digital paintings I do on the 2012 Mac Pro that exceeds 5000 by 2500... I see a slowdown and brush strokes start to lag... an image that is 10000 by 5000 is virtually unworkable... I was hoping to get faster performances and be able to create even higher resolution images with the next machine...

Now this slowdown and lag in brush strokes... I don't know what causes it... Is it processor power, graphic card not powerful enough, or simply Photoshop having a hard time... One thing is for certain, it doesn't seems to be a ram problem as the whole 12gb never gets full...

I asked the question on the Mac Pro forum and many were pointing to the Graphic Card... Will the 750m with 2gb of ddr5 beat the ati with 1gb in the Mac Pro?

Curious to hear your thoughts on that...

 

[Yahooligan]

Fact 1: My 5 year old gaming desktop runs circles around any of the new rMBPs, even the fully specced 15" rMBP.

Fact 2: My 5 year old gaming desktop compared to your Mac Pro is a Subaru compared to a Ferrari.

Fact 3: Because my computer beats any of the rMBPs and your Mac Pro beats my computer, your Mac Pro will trounce any of the rMBPs today. So no, a fully specced out rMBP will not come close to your Mac Pro and alas, this is the price to be paid for portability.

Fact 4: You don't need a Ferrari to commute to work. Similarly, you don't need a Mac Pro to do the kind of work you're doing in PhotoShop. I'm fairly certain that in going mobile, you won't notice a performance hit in your intended usage.

Fact 5: If your work involves computer benchmarking or virtualization or serious compiling or any other CPU intensive task, you will notice the difference between your Mac Pro and the rMBP like night and day. Your Mac Pro will perform nearly twice as well as the best rMBP today in such situations.

Fact 6: As you have mentioned, your work is not the sort that will seriously tax a well-specced rMBP and you won't miss much by going mobile.

Fact 7: You won't notice a difference.

Fact 8: You'd be smart to buy a rMBP and go mobile. Sell your Mac Pro and keep the display for when you are not out and about.

All those "facts" and yet...so, so wrong.

The 2012 Mac Pro quad-core 3.2 gets the following scores...

Geekbench: 9850/10440*

Which is LESS than my mid-2012 cMBP. You even claimed that for benchmarking the Mac Pro would be "nearly twice as fast" as the best rMBP. What planet are you on?

I'm not saying that the rMBP is that fast...I'm saying that the Mac Pro quad-core 3.2 isn't as fast as your "facts" claim it to be. Perhaps you misread "quad 3.2" and assumed he said "dual hex-core 3.0" because that's an easy mistake to make if you forgot to put on your glasses.

 

[Breedlove]

Nope. The 750M will not beat the ATI on your Mac Pro.

Does not seem to be a hardware problem, however.

Have you tried tweaking your preferences in Photoshop? There might be something within your installation that is causing that lag.

Could also be third-party plug-ins that are either corrupt, faulty, or installed incorrectly. Might even be something minute like bad fonts.

You might want to try troubleshooting to figure pinpoint where the problem lies or even see if setting everything to default fixes the problem.

If you're using a Wacom, then maybe you could try reinstalling the drivers for that.

I am by no means an expert but I'm inclined to doubt that your hardware is the reason for the lag you're experiencing.

In my own experience, PS CS6 runs well no matter how large a canvas I use on my desktop and CS3 works great on my 2009 MBP.

 

[Yahooligan]

OP, the CPU with the rMBP will best the Mac Pro, but the GPU on the Mac Pro will best the rMBP, though just barely.

Mac Pro GPU - http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Radeon+HD+5770&id=6

rMBP - http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=GeForce+GT+750M&id=2492

I suspect the rMBP will perform just fine for your needs and will basically perform about the same as your Mac Pro, but will beat it in certain situations.

----------

Nope. The 750M will not beat the ATI on your Mac Pro.

That is only one metric, and the GT 750M tests just a little slower than the ATI in the Mac Pro. The rMBP will beat the Mac Pro in CPU and memory I/O, which evens things out a bit.

 

[Macshroomer]

Any digital paintings I do on the 2012 Mac Pro that exceeds 5000 by 2500... I see a slowdown and brush strokes start to lag... an image that is 10000 by 5000 is virtually unworkable... I was hoping to get faster performances and be able to create even higher resolution images with the next machine...

Now this slowdown and lag in brush strokes... I don't know what causes it... Is it processor power, graphic card not powerful enough, or simply Photoshop having a hard time... One thing is for certain, it doesn't seems to be a ram problem as the whole 12gb never gets full.

I'd update your MacPro a bit. Get more ram, assign a fast primary and even secondary scratch disk that is not your boot drive and perhaps upgrade cards, the 5770 is kind of a slouch for 2013 tasks.

I am running a 6 core 3.33 with 32GB of ram, 12TB of internal storage, 240GB SSD for a boot in the spare optical bay. I am about to upgrade cards to a GTX680 from my 5770, the same one you have. I routinely work on scans that are 8,000 x 8,000 and stitched work that always exceeds 15,000 x 5,000 and can hit 30,000 pixels across on some files, never a hiccup sir, ever. I also work on a 30" Cinema display and could not imagine working with enormous files on a 15" screen.

I'm not saying a good portable is not worth it, I just ordered a top spec'd 13" for that, but for monster work your MacPro can and will do better with some thoughtful upgrades.

 

[Breedlove]

All those "facts" and yet...so, so wrong.

The 2012 Mac Pro quad-core 3.2 gets the following scores...

Geekbench: 9850/10440*

Which is LESS than my mid-2012 cMBP. You even claimed that for benchmarking the Mac Pro would be "nearly twice as fast" as the best rMBP. What planet are you on?

I'm not saying that the rMBP is that fast...I'm saying that the Mac Pro quad-core 3.2 isn't as fast as your "facts" claim it to be. Perhaps you misread "quad 3.2" and assumed he said "dual hex-core 3.0" because that's an easy mistake to make if you forgot to put on your glasses.

I'm from planet Gliese 581g. I assume from your comment (we on Gliese 581g have not used this expression - what planet are you from - since we mastered intergalactic communication; well except to truly ask, "what planet are you from?") that you are from earth. Salutations from outer space!

And yes, I did forget to put my glasses on (or at least our equivalent apparatus - ocular implants). How did you know? Thank you for reminding me, good sir.

On my planet we have benchmarks other than GeekBench and I was almost certain that they exist on your planet as well. Not sure if I'm mistaken in this claim as well. You might have to check for me

I do appreciate your services Mr. Earth-man (or woman; I apologize if I sound sexist because we have long since foregone the separation of sexes here). If I need a fact checked, I hope you will allow me the pleasure of calling upon you!

 

[Yahooligan]

I'm from planet Gliese 581g. I assume from your comment (we on Gliese 581g have not used this expression - what planet are you from - since we mastered intergalactic communication; well except to truly ask, "what planet are you from?") that you are from earth. Salutations from outer space!

And yes, I did forget to put my glasses on (or at least our equivalent apparatus - ocular implants). How did you know? Thank you for reminding me, good sir.

On my planet we have benchmarks other than GeekBench and I was almost certain that they exist on your planet as well. Not sure if I'm mistaken in this claim as well. You might have to check for me

I do appreciate your services Mr. Earth-man (or woman; I apologize if I sound sexist because we have long since foregone the separation of sexes here). If I need a fact checked, I hope you will allow me the pleasure of calling upon you!

You can't honestly say that you didn't expect to be called out for all your "facts", right? If you can provide a link showing that a quad-core 3.2 Mac Pro is nearly twice as fast as even the newest, best rMBP then by all means, post it up and back up your "facts" with...facts!

 

[thundersteele]

Why not the new 2013 Mac Pro? That should be the machine you really want.

 

[Breedlove]

You can't honestly say that you didn't expect to be called out for all your "facts", right? If you can provide a link showing that a quad-core 3.2 Mac Pro is nearly twice as fast as even the newest, best rMBP then by all means, post it up and back up your "facts" with...facts!

Touche.

Can't argue against my mistake so it seems like you win. Please allow me call you "master."

Master, would you like a lollipop?

 

[vincmo]

Thanks for the inputs guys!

I tried tweaking Photoshop, updating and reinstalling the Wacom drivers and so forth... It just seems like at a certain image size and brush size, the computer can't cope with the resolution anymore...

I was hoping to start painting in higher resolution with my next computer but that might be wishful thinking...

I considered the new Mac Pro but simply can't have it all at the same time... Best of both worlds would be to have them both and be able to go mobile when needed... But the wallet is not ready for that yet!

I guess I still need to investigate the matter... I might simply give the rMBP a try and return it if it can't deliver performance-wise...

Thanks again guys!