[Jeffro283]

Hello,

My name is Drew, and I ran across these forums last summer. I posted last summer, as to what specs of Mac Pro I should investigate, and after much deliberation, I finally got one. I am not currently at the computer, but here are some of the things that I got for it:

+4GB RAM
+400GB 7200 RPM WD Hard Drive

Thus far, I have loved every minute of it. However, this summer, I have some extra cash, and I am thinking of upgrading some more portions of it. Before I ask about specific components, I will give a little bit of background on what I do.

I am primarily a CG Artist. I work mainly with 3D Modeling and Animation (which I will get to later), while also working with 2D Animation, large-format print editing, vector illustration, and video editing.

I have rarely encountered problems with my computer "hanging," but there have been instances, and I would like to know if there is anything that I could do to speed my machine up. Here are things that I am looking into purchasing:

-Faster Hard Drive (10000 RPM+?)

-Another Graphics Card

-4GB More RAM

I know I need specific parts, but is there anyone here who can point me in the right direction as to speeding up things? As I said, I work mainly with 3D Modeling and Animation, so render times are a big deal for me.

I have also been thinking on getting a second monitor...is there anyone here who can attest to how good/bad of an idea that is?

For my final issue with my Mac Pro...and this is terrible...I, through my education, have been taught 3DS Max. Therefore, I typically elect to use 3DS Max for all my 3D Needs. However, I have had issues for the better part of a year with 3DS Max and Boot Camp. This is not the issue that I am inquring about, but rather, I want to know if anyone has experience with Mac Pros and Windows XP 64-Bit/Vista 64-Bit. I assume that my render times and processing times in general will be greatly reduced with 64-Bit Windows, but I am not sure. Is there anyone who can share experience with this?

Whoo...that's a lot to take in. Sorry about the novel, for anyone who is still reading, and I want to thank you in advance for your help. I have one final matter to attend to...

Anyway, thank you for reading all this, and I hope to hear from some of you soon!

Drew

[mduell]

Are your performance issues due to swapping (check Activity Monitor after a long work session), waiting for files to load from disk, or neither?

[Jeffro283]

Let me clarify: I am mainly looking for ways to streamline my workload, and deal with working with large/complicated files. I don't really have any performance issues. The only issues that I have had occured within Windows XP/Vista, where not all my RAM is recognized (was working in 32-bit), and I was working on extremely complicated 3D Files. Does that make sense?

[mduell]

You said: "I know I need specific parts, but is there anyone here who can point me in the right direction as to speeding up things?"
That sounds like a performance issue to me; changing your workflow may change the bottleneck, but that's much harder to asses with the limited information you've provided us.

[Jeffro283]

Originally Posted by mduell 

You said: "I know I need specific parts, but is there anyone here who can point me in the right direction as to speeding up things?"
That sounds like a performance issue to me; changing your workflow may change the bottleneck, but that's much harder to asses with the limited information you've provided us.

...yet again, stating that I don't really have a problem, just wondering if there are any ways to speed up my machine when I DO have problems.

When I said that I know I need specific parts, I was mainly speaking to purchasing Mac-compatible parts.

As far as performance issues...let me see here. This is where I am looking to up my performance:

-During the Rendering Process (does a good job, but on similar machines, I have seen faster)

-During program loading/file loading. Generally, this is not a big deal, but when I start to deal with larger files, things get bogged down a bit.

-During file operating with large, complex 3D files. When I rotate in my viewport, etc, there are many times where the computer slows down, making files difficult to work with (yet again, large/complex files).

-During multi-application use. I am often using Photoshop and 3DS Max at the same time, along with having browsers, among other things.

I am not sure if this was any more clear, but I hope this helps. I am not necessarily attempting to make my machine quicker, but I did want to get some feedback from other digital artists on not only render times in 64-bit, but also working with multiple monitors simultaneously.

That being said, if I can fix the afformentioned issues in this post relatively cheaply, I will attempt to do so.

[zerostar]

What mac pro do you have and what video card?

[Jeffro283]

Originally Posted by zerostar 

What mac pro do you have and what video card?

I have the Mac Pro from about this time last summer...ordered brand new...the graphics card? I believe it was one step up on the ladder to a 512MB card...I believe it was the NVIDIA model, but I have no idea on the specifics. When I get to the computer, I can update this.

[mduell]

It sounds like you need all three.

For the hard drive, pick up a $300 Western Digital VelociRaptor and the $50 Mac Pro adapter.

For RAM, a pair of 2GB sticks for $140.

For the video card, the $225 Radeon 3870 is probably the best option (short of the $1500+ Quadros).

[Jeffro283]

Thanks for the advice. When I get the new HD, do I need to be booting from that one? Also, does anyone have any answers for the other questions that I had? Thanks!

[mduell]

It'd be a good idea to boot and put scratch on the fast hard drive.

[Jeffro283]

How much of a performance increase would I notice? I am assuming that I will be jumping from 7200rpm to 10000rpm, so yeah.

Also, how involved is uninstalling and reinstalling Leopard onto a new hard drive, and booting from that one? I have done no research into the topic, but I would be interested to know how difficult it is.

Any answers with my other issues? Anyone?

[mduell]

Originally Posted by Jeffro283 

How much of a performance increase would I notice? I am assuming that I will be jumping from 7200rpm to 10000rpm, so yeah.

Also, how involved is uninstalling and reinstalling Leopard onto a new hard drive, and booting from that one? I have done no research into the topic, but I would be interested to know how difficult it is.

There's no possible way to give a meaningful answer to that question from the information you've provided us.

Installing Leopard is pretty easy.

[Jeffro283]

So, yet again, thank you for helping me, but I am not sure what information you are looking for. What other information needs to be provided so that you can understand my problem further?

I am not looking for a specific number for my increase, or anything like that...I am just wondering if it is actually worth the money and trouble to buy a new drive and boot from it. I am not completely technologically illiterate, but I don't know exactly what you are looking for in terms of my issues.

[OreoCookie]

Deleted.
(Right reply for the wrong thread )

[mduell]

Originally Posted by Jeffro283 

What other information needs to be provided so that you can understand my problem further?

I am not looking for a specific number for my increase, or anything like that...I am just wondering if it is actually worth the money and trouble to buy a new drive and boot from it.

You said "How much of a performance increase would I notice?" To answer that we'd need a detailed profiling of your workflow, and, well, a lot of time on our hands.
To answer your new question, "if it is actually worth the money and trouble", we'd need more information about your personal cost/productivity tradeoff, as well as the above study.

I'm not trying to be difficult, I'm telling you why we can't answer your questions. We can't even tell you for certain if a new high spindle speed drive will be any faster; if you fill it to 99% capacity, it will probably be slower than your current setup.

[OreoCookie]

I second mduell here: we cannot tell you how much of an improvement you see and whether you can actually `notice' a difference.

If you don't have enough (usable) RAM, then an upgrade to 64 bit Windows + a RAM upgrade would speed up your system. If your models fit into the memory, then you need a more powerful graphics card. If you cannot give us the make and model of your video card, for example, we cannot give any recommendations. (You can find out all about your system in the System Profiler of OS X located in /Applications/Utilities.)

Specs we need (all can be taken from the System Profiler):
(1) Number of cpus and cores
(2) Number and size of harddrives, make and model if you can.
(3) Make and model of the graphics card.

Info about your workflow:
(1) Amount of RAM which is used and amount of RAM which is swapped (e. g. pageouts on OS X).
(2) Number and type of apps running simultaneously.
(3) Size of your models.

If you are using Windows, you can get some of these infos from your system monitor (e. g. by pressing ctrl + alt + delete).

[Jeffro283]

Excellent! I wasn't deliberatly attempting to be dense, but those are the types of things that I needed to know that YOU need to know. My computer is at the house, and I should be able to check on that information and get back to you in the next few days on exactly what I have going on.

[dimmer]

I work mainly with 3D Modeling and Animation

Then you should indeed look at getting a Quadro graphics board: expensive, sure, but built to deal with these things. A higher end "gamer" GPU will provide little if any benefit to you.

IHMO.

[OreoCookie]

That's not true.
These days, most of the high-end gpus are derivatives of the gaming gpus and the main difference in the windows world is the driver (different optimization: correct display of objects instead of fps, better support of OpenGL).

My brother deals just fine with a GeForce 8800 (he's studying to become an engineer).

[mduell]

There are definitely some feature and performance benefits to the Quadros over the gaming cards, but I'm not convinced a Quadro will solve the OP's issues.

[bearcatrp]

Just to point out for the op and was mentioned before, go into activity monitor and select the memory tab. Look at the page ins/outs. If the outs are more than 10% of page ins, you need more memory due to information being written to virtual memory (the hard disk a second time) which slow performance. As for the hard drive, install the new one, use super duper or ccc (shareware) to clone your drive to the new one. Once cloned, goto system preference and designate the new drive as start up. Once its running like you want to, then wipe the other clean and use for your scratch. As for the graphics card, unless you have the bucks for the quadro, get one with 512mb ram. I do video editing and have 8gb in my mac pro and I still have a little page outs but not at 10%. Hope this helps.

[Jeffro283]

Okay, so I have a pretty massive update here, and I hope that this is a little bit more on the informative side...

Mac Pro:

Processor Info:
Dual-Core Intel Xenon 2.66 ghz
Two Processors
Four Cores

Graphics Info:
ATI Radeon x1900 PCIe (slot 1)
x16
512mb

RAM (all DDR2 667mhz):
Dim 1-512MB (stock)
Dim 2-512MB (stock)
Dim 3-2GB (Crucial or Corsair...can't remember)
Dim 4-2GB (same as above)

Hard Drives:
ST3250820AS
7200 rpm?
250GB?
(this is the stock hard drive...)

WDC WD4000 AAKS-00TMA0
400GB (I believe)
no idea on the RPMs...I believe either 7200 or 10,000

During this test, I was running:
-Safari (idle...no internet connection)
-Itunes (regular play, no shuffle)
-Last.fm
-Photoshop (8.5x11 in 300dpi file)
-Illustrator (18x20 in file)
-System Profiler
-System Diagnostics

My memory, when cranking up the Photoshop and Illustrator files, looked like this:

Free: 2.26GB
Page Ins: 548.21 MB
Page Outs: 0B

With that said, these are the specific times that I have found slowdown to occur:

-During use of 3D products (when rotating in the viewports...this is a Windows problem...not in the Mac OS...don't have a 64-bit Windows installed yet)

-When ejecting a USB device/Firewire device, the machine takes a longer time than other machines that I have used to eject the disk

-When editing large Illustrator/Photoshop/Indesign documents with changes (changing large amounts of font, scrolling when large, high-dpi raster images are embedded, etc)

-When opening the Mac explorer window...where I am accessing HD folders and stuff...it doesn't freeze or anything, but the wheel starts spinning (my mouse turns into the wheel), and things have to click on and make the *wherrrr* noise for a second or two (maybe more)

-Alt-tabbing in and out of games such as Bioshock (yet again, in Windows)

-There may be more, so if these seem like symptoms of something, and you know other areas where I may be slowing down, but I didn't mention, just ask. I may have neglected a detail here or there.

The final thing that I have to add is that the 3DS files that I have been working with are 70MB+. I was working on a digital short last semester, and I have no idea of the poly count (3DS Max license error...working on that), so I can't check it at the moment.

Is that a good amount of information?

Drew

P.S. I have read somewhere that it matters what order you install your RAM in. Is there anyone who can detail this process for me? Also, how exactly does installing a second graphics card on a Mac work? Specific order with that? Thanks guys!