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Lightroom $4K iMac VS $4K PC performance test

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Re: Lightroom $4K iMac VS $4K PC performance test

#21
post #7
post #4

These comparisons are silly. Now imagine it's a BMW vs someone's project car both with the same $$$ invested. Yeah, the project car will probably smoke it. But not everyone wants a project car.

They should be doing this test against a Mac Pro if they want a fair comparison. And yes, the Mac Pro would likely be more expensive, but I don't think it's a surprise to anyone that building your own overclocked PC is cheaper.

Why would it necessarily be cheaper? After all Apple has both economy of scale and the capacity to buy up the entire manufacturing run of many of the components. They should be able to assemble a system as tightly integrated as a Mac much cheaper than somebody could go out and buy all the parts for.

A better example might be the cost delta between buying a car from the manufacturer and buying all the parts to make the same car separately and putting it together. The direct from manufacturer car will be far cheaper.

Re: Lightroom $4K iMac VS $4K PC performance test

#22

A lot of that iMac's cost is its retina display, and you didn't bother buying a retina display for the PC. Running a speed test is silly, there are already major differences in the build. To make this remotely more scientific, you'd either need to buy a 4k monitor for the PC, or use a Mac Pro and just take the monitor out of the equation.

Why would speed be silly? That is a business, who saves money with every speed increase.

Also, the end of the article shows the next text is a Mac Pro. I thought commenting without reading was a reddit thing, not hn.

Re: Lightroom $4K iMac VS $4K PC performance test

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lightroom has a single core CPU bottleneck, multisocket is pointless for the this use case. The rest is on the GPU

I suspected that, but what's with the monstrous 8 core thing then? Couldn't you equally overclock a 4 core CPU and save hundreds of dollars? Basically, is the whole article just nonsense? :)

Absolute nonsense.

This stinks of a cross between attempting to do PR and having someone who didn't make a spending decision justify it.

As I said elsewhere, the place to improve is in their human workflows, or there is no improvement to get.

Re: Lightroom $4K iMac VS $4K PC performance test

#26
post #18

60 hours is easily lost when some piece on your custom rig dies and you don't have apple care.

From the article:

"The honest truth is, I have spent just as much time in a Apple store at the Genius Counter getting my Apple machines repaired as I have maintaining my well built PCs."

Re: Lightroom $4K iMac VS $4K PC performance test

#27
This guy managed to edit a 4k video on last years Macbook faster than a much beefier Windows computer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnapaZYD2cU

I think that speaks to the "quality" of the software more than anything. I'm wiling to bet that Adobe Premiere would render that macbook useless. I wonder how much more(I can't imagine how difficult it is to write their software cross-platform) amazing the Adobe suite would be if they only focused on Windows (which allow for these super powered machines).

Re: Lightroom $4K iMac VS $4K PC performance test

#28
post #18

60 hours is easily lost when some piece on your custom rig dies and you don't have apple care.

Do it like any other responsible place and keep spare machines at hand.

Oh, I forgot, there's nothing as painless as a properly set up Windows Server with auto provisioning...

My primary work machine is a 2011 MBP and it's working like a fucking beast, but still, I fear the moment it will break and require 1-2 days in the IT department for reinstall.

Provisioning a Win7 machine with MSIs is PAINLESS if you know how to deal with the MS toolchain (except Java which is a PITA to get running...)

Ditto for network-backed home directories, as long as you have Cat6 networking and good networking hardware which you should have anyway if you're a serious business, it's a couple of config options set up ONCE for the entire AD and you're done.

Macs, to this day, don't speak PXE but their own Apple protocol, and something even remotely alike to assigning MSIs via Active Directory is not achievable without (paid!) 3rd party tools.

Re: Lightroom $4K iMac VS $4K PC performance test

#30

A lot of that iMac's cost is its retina display, and you didn't bother buying a retina display for the PC. Running a speed test is silly, there are already major differences in the build. To make this remotely more scientific, you'd either need to buy a 4k monitor for the PC, or use a Mac Pro and just take the monitor out of the equation.

Retina only good at pixels but didn't mean its color accuracy better than others, like EIZO.
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