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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

#31

Post by brigade »

rayiner wrote: post #11
danfinlay wrote: post #6

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.

But the Mac pro hasn't been updated in years. The gpu is old, and this is mostly a gpu test.

The Mac Pro can dissipate way more heat than an iMac, so between the two GPUs it can have almost twice the FLOPS of the iMac's GPU, even though it's several years older.

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

#32

Post by omonra »

bane wrote: post #21
ben174 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Apple probably doesn't 'get out of bed' for a profit margin smaller than X%.

That number is probably an order of magnitude higher than the profit margin of component makers.

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

#33

Post by dbcooper »

stegosaurus wrote: post #5

4000USD is a lot of money. That seems like an odd setup. Not having ever wanted to buy a machine for that amount of cash, I'd expect to do better with multi-socket systems. Anyone care to chime in? I struggled to spend over 1K GBP with my latest machine. (I think 'Extreme Edition' is basically like buying the S version of a car, mind). i7-5820K, 64GB ram. One thing that does stick out is an odd monitor comparison. Th…

That $480 gaming motherboard does seem rather excessive too ...

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

#34

Post by bloaf »

maxxxxx wrote: post #13
danfinlay wrote: post #6

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.

That's true. They should have gotten a 5k screen with 5120‑by‑2880 resolution for the PC like the Mac. This Dell costs 2000 which would have reduced the available for the PC components. On the other hand if you don't care for such resolution the PC may be the better choice.

If they wanted a more apples to apples comparison in the hardware department, they probably should have added $600 to the monitor price[1] and paid for it by using the same CPU as the iMac (i.e. a 6700k)

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Dell-Monitor-UP2715K-27-Inch-LED-Lit/d...

Honestly, though, I don't think the point was to do an apples-to-apples hardware comparison. This was on a cost basis only.

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

#35

Post by ryan-allen »

I haven't looked at it yet but I'm putting my money on the 4K PC kicking the crap out of the Mac, unless the screen kills the PC budget...

EDIT: Yep, for what it's worth, if you are doing retouch for print, pro studios use EIZO screens and they are usually around 2k-3k+ per unit.

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

#36

Post by Zombieball »

bloaf wrote: post #34
maxxxxx wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true. They should have gotten a 5k screen with 5120‑by‑2880 resolution for the PC like the Mac. This Dell costs 2000 which would have reduced the available for the PC components. On the other hand if you don't care for such resolution the PC may be the better choice.

If they wanted a more apples to apples comparison in the hardware department, they probably should have added $600 to the monitor price[1] and paid for it by using the same CPU as the iMac (i.e. a 6700k) [1] http://www.amazon.com/Dell-Monitor-UP2715K-27-Inch-LED-Lit/d... Honestly, though, I don't think the point was to do an apples-to-apples hardware comparison. This was on a cost basis only.

I guess the issue is the driving factor of the iMac cost is the monitor resolution. It would've made more sense (if they didn't need the resolution) to pick a different iMac and spec out a PC at a similar price point.

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

#37

Post by HillaryBriss »

bloaf wrote: post #34
maxxxxx wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true. They should have gotten a 5k screen with 5120‑by‑2880 resolution for the PC like the Mac. This Dell costs 2000 which would have reduced the available for the PC components. On the other hand if you don't care for such resolution the PC may be the better choice.

If they wanted a more apples to apples comparison in the hardware department, they probably should have added $600 to the monitor price[1] and paid for it by using the same CPU as the iMac (i.e. a 6700k) [1] http://www.amazon.com/Dell-Monitor-UP2715K-27-Inch-LED-Lit/d... Honestly, though, I don't think the point was to do an apples-to-apples hardware comparison. This was on a cost basis only.

The article also leaves out the cost of their IT guy's time to assemble the custom PC components. How much does an hour of Joseph WU's time cost? How many hours did it take for him to order, receive, unpack, and then assemble the components?

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

#38

Post by musesum »

Final Thoughts > "... Apple is simply adding new products and updating product lines often times without much thought it seems. This can be seen in the horrid pen solution found in the iPad Pro where charging it requires you to have a spear sticking out of your iPad."

The above seem like a non-sequitur, but seems apt. I switched from Windows to OSX in 2007 to work exclusively on iOS. In the past year: I abandoned WatchOS due to artificial constraints, discovered that the Apple Pencil has an annoying skid/squeak, and an Auto-update from Xcode 7.2 to 7.3 broke my C++ toolchain. The last, of which, Apple QA has decided not to fix, even though XC 4 thru 7.2 worked just fine. Meanwhile, can't run Cuda on my year old MBP AMD Chipset. I may be switching platforms. Hence the interest in OP's article, including the tangental Final Thoughts.

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

#39

Post by iiiggglll »

> Speaking conservatively, a 25% difference in performance would turn an 8 hour wedding edit into 10 hours.

That's only true if all 8 hours are 100% spent waiting on the machine, which doesn't seem likely. This doesn't seem like a CPU-bound task. Most of the time is probably spent by the human actually looking at the photos and making decisions.

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

#40

Post by coldtea »

maxxxxx wrote: post #13
danfinlay wrote: post #6

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.

That's true. They should have gotten a 5k screen with 5120‑by‑2880 resolution for the PC like the Mac. This Dell costs 2000 which would have reduced the available for the PC components. On the other hand if you don't care for such resolution the PC may be the better choice.

>On the other hand if you don't care for such resolution the PC may be the better choice.

On the other hand it's a Lightroom test -- the target market for Lightroom is precisely those that do care for such resolution.

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