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What are the real world speed differences between 2.8 and 3.0ghz?

J

Josh-H

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 10, 2008
39
4
Considering I will ONLY be using this mac pro for photo editing is there any real advantage of getting 3.0ghz instead of 2.8ghz? [talking about a new machine here - so 8 cores.]

I work exlcusivley in CS3 and Lightroom 2.0 with 120mb Tiff files - can be over a gig with layers.

Im just about to place the order for the new mac pro and I need to try and get the price down a bit. If 3.0ghz doesnt really buy me anything then I can save some dollars.

thanks heaps.
 
its pretty small...i mean there is a difference, and it might show up for the stuff your doing.

Comes down to how much you value a little extra time, and if your ever gonna upgrade the chip(if you're gonna pick up a faster CPU when they are cheaper in the future, why bother with the 3.0Ghz?)
 
Save the money, just go with the 2.8GHz model. :D

You can then put it towards something else. Performance wise, RAID can help out with speed considerably, as it helps alleviate the HDD bottleneck. :)
 
All 3.0GHz gives you is time. It offers no additional functionality or longevity. (edit: for most applications, certainly for photo editing)

If your workflow is often interrupted by waiting on the processor then the 7% speed can be beneficial. That all depends on how you value your time though.

Processor speed is probably something that least hinders most creative types these days so I wouldn't bother upgrading.
 
Could be > 9% in a real world test. Typically Xeons are real workhorses when it comes to floating point calculations.

I may be to your benefit to do a side by side comparison. I have done this a few times in Apple stores with their hardware. Apple store people have always allowed me to do this. I suppose only for reasons to do comparisons, not actually crunch big projects then take them home.

Even if it is a straight 9%, if you are doing a lot of crunching then it may be to your benefit.
 
Not worth it

Save your money. Apple charges like 800 for each speed bump upgrade. At 1600 for 3.2 procs, you could use that money for more memory, a raid card with an internal array, and you would have more storage, faster performing machine for day to day use, and probably better performance with photoshop considering the faster scratch disk and memory increase.

Noushy

PS. Nehalem machines are coming that will be faster than all of the current macpro machines, save your money and you will feel less of a sting upgrading to those machines down the road.
 
You could use that free overclocking app and make the 2.8 ghz run at about 3.1-3.2 ghz, so you save yourself lots of cash...

It doesn't damage the system, it heats it up just a tad more, and the clock (yeah the time) runs a bit faster, but that is the only disadvantages. So, basically a 15 percent gain in speed for free is something I wouldn't complain about and something to be considered.

The leftover money can be put towards lots of ram, 16 gigs if you total it up from what you would have spent on the processor. Or hard drives, you name it.
 
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