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Just have a clone of your current setup just in case on a separate drive. I am ordering it this week, no question about it. Thanks for reporting on this
 
Just have a clone of your current setup just in case on a separate drive. I am ordering it this week, no question about it. Thanks for reporting on this

I'm anxiously awaiting your report. I'm deciding between the refurb 2.53 or a new 2.66, and the only thing holding me up is weather one or both can go to 8 gigs, for the sake of future proofing...............
 
How can i do that ? :confused:

Here are some good basics on that http://macperformanceguide.com/Mac-MonitoringTips.html

Now during this purchase i have been running a action from Lloyd called speed test in Photoshop. Basically you start off with a 722mg files and run a action that has about 20 different filters and such going on and it is basically going after all the Ram you have to run it.

Interesting here are some numbers that I can talk about because i ran this test before I sold my MacPro and my older 2.4 15 inch 2006 model laptop to get the new one described below in my signature.

So
MacPro 2006 late 2.66 with 12gbs of Ram using a WD 10k Velociraptor Drive as the OS setup and than running 2 of the same drives running Raid 0 and using part of it as a scratch drive. Now this is a fast setup but my time to run that file was 56.2 seconds

Than running my 2.4 with fast 7200 rpm MBP with 6gb of ram I got a respectable 59.2 second

Okay Now the new laptop with 4gb of ram and one Intel 25m drive and my number went up to 109 seconds because lack of ram only 4gb

Than the new laptop still One SSD drive but 6gb of Ram and I dropped to 58 seconds. Big difference here with just adding 2 more gb of Ram.

Now same 6gb but now with 2 SSD intel 25m Running Raid O and i picked up a little more time to 56 seconds. Noticed I just matched my desktop . Faster processor and faster Ram DDR 3

With 8gb coming I do expect this to come down even more. Now let me add Photoshop is a very Ram hungry program and I am seeing gains But on programs that are more Core dependent my 4 core to 2 core numbers have dropped and this is in Raw processing which is more processor based and core based.

So in short the extra Ram will help with processing also as i seen those numbers drop just going to 6gb . For example Capture One which is a specialized Raw processing program like Aperture for example . My typical time to run 10 Raw files with a output of a 228 mg Tif file . The Mac Pro did this in 2:12 minutes. 4 cores is the big plus here But just on the new machine from 4gb to 6gb my times are 4:10 minutes for 4gb to 3:35 minutes. This program is also somewhat Ram dependent as well but the more cores you can throw at it the better. I know these numbers are somewhat confusing but the answer is as we keep going up in Ram the numbers keep getting shorter in these types of processing times. Basically the bottom line is Ram matters and even at running normal applications on your machine you can have more programs open and it will not bog the system down. Which the system itself wants a certain amount just to run.
 
I should have added the MacPro was 667mhz as well as the old laptop . These new boxes at 1067 mhz and DDR3 ram really help. Unfortunately for Photographers we have to buy systems that high end gamers usually go after except for high end graphics cards. The bad news it cost a lot and I personally never do any gaming. Go figure:):):)
 
Look forward to your update on 8GB.

I canceled my order on a 2.4 MBP for the 2.6 MBP yesterday, hopefully money well spent. 4GB is just too limiting but the 17" MBP is just too big. I usually run with 5+GB of active RAM at any time.

I should have added the MacPro was 667mhz as well as the old laptop . These new boxes at 1067 mhz and DDR3 ram really help. Unfortunately for Photographers we have to buy systems that high end gamers usually go after except for high end graphics cards. The bad news it cost a lot and I personally never do any gaming. Go figure:):):)
 
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