Top End Mac Pro compared with G5 with Adobe Products

[Wayne Guy]

We've got a bunch of Mac G5's and a 2gHZ Intel iMac. I like the Intel Mac a lot but Adobe products run slow on our 2gHZ Intel iMac.

Does the Adobe Suite run quick enough to be acceptable on a top end Mac Pro.

In other words, does more horse power diminish the lag of Adobe products run through Rosetta?

[peterpica]

I was about to plop down 9 grand for the real biggy & 30" monitor, 8 gig ram, etc... But then I read the MacWorld writeup... suggesting that if one's a big Adobe user, they might as well wait until next spring when Adobe's tools allegedly will be Intel friendly.

[Peter_Truskier@adobeforums.com]

they might as well wait until next spring when Adobe's tools allegedly
will be Intel friendly.




I would tend to agree, and by then you'll probably get better bang for your Apple buck as well. (Of course, you could get that 30" monitor now :-))

[peterpica]

Peter T... already have a 23" that's great except my eyesight's going south. Besides, I've got my wife "prepped" into expecting some large cartons on the doorstep this fall. She's "ready" to inherit my G5 w/23" CD tube (her iMac's destined for our 7 yr old granddaughter). Not sure what to do. Wish I'd hear some positive performance things about Adobe under Rosetta.

Anybody?

[Peter_Truskier@adobeforums.com]

I can't speak for the Mac Pro, but I've been running CS2 on my 2 GHz MacBook Pro with 2 GB RAM, and it is no faster (and sometimes slower) than my 1.25 GHz G4 Powerbook. Rosetta is definitely a memory and performance drag. The 8 GB of RAM you're planning on may make a big difference, but I'm guessing that the G5 will still be faster.

[by_Buko@adobeforums.com]

You might want to read the Quad now or Macintel later thread in the Photoshop forum.

[peterpica]

Thanks Buko. I think I'll cool my heels for awhile, at least until round 2 of the Mac Pro's hit the streets in January (?). Only problem is that I've got my management better half psyched for action now.

;-O

[Eric_@_MCA@adobeforums.com]

One possible point in favor of Mac Pros is also that you can just pop new Intel CPU's in them to upgrade them down the road. A 2.5ghz Quad G5 will be just that until the end of its days, I suspect.

One possible point against them is that the Mac Pro's FB-DIMMs are apparently pretty sluggish. As in, the MacBook Pro's can access their RAM faster. Also, the Mac Pro currently lack SLI support, which is probably not something anyone using Adobe products care hugely about, but which would be nice if you do heavy 3d-related stuff. Of course, there's no way to know if & when Apple will get Intel parts that help rectify this situation.

One last note--for anyone considering the Mac Pro, I definitely recommend reading the AnandTech review <http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2816>. They deal with PCs all the time, so they bring up some interesting points about the hardware that I didn't see mentioned in other reviews (like the FB-DIMM speed). On the downside, I don't believe they even mentioned Adobe products at all during the benchmarks.