Deliveries Begin
Capture Integration has begun delivering 12-core Mac Pros to our customers. As a Certified Apple Reseller we work with many of our customers to order them a Mac Pro perfectly customized to their needs.
Speed Today vs. Longevity
As noted by Digllyod not every application is ready today to make full use of 12-cores. The current version of Photoshop CS5 does not scale well beyond 6 cores, and in fact may run slower today on a 12-core machine than a similar 8-core (when it’s the only application running). Looking long term though it’s nearly impossible to imagine Adobe not putting a strong emphasis on optimizing Photoshop to make better use of multi-core machines. Other programs like Capture One, Panotools, and Final Cut Pro can already take advantage of 12-cores. Many Mac Pro purchasers will be using their desktop for 4-5 years, so our emphasis is on the longevity of the system and how long it will be useable in a professional workflow – with that in mind we are clearly behind the 12-core machines as the best long term investment.
Capture One on 12-Core Machines
Thanks to Chris Barret, our first customer to receive a 12-core Mac Pro we were able to verify what we had been told by Phase One. Capture One’s current version, 5.1.2, can already take advantage of the new 12-core processors. See below a screen grab showing the heavy use of all the machine’s cores during the processing of ten P65+ files. The “dips” in the graph are when the processing of a file is completed and the result is being written to disk.
Note that because of "hyper-threading" there are 24 "virtual cores" in a 12-core Mac Pro and therefore 24 graphs in the Activity Monitor showing CPU usage.
Buy a Mac Pro from Capture Integration
As a certified reseller Capture Integration can provide you the same great pricing available at apple.com. As experts in high-end photography we can help you customize a machine to make the most out of your money. Contact Us today to order a Mac through us and we can help you with hard questions like these:
- Should I select SSD or non-SSD storage
- Should I use RAID? (internal, external, or not at all)
- Are there wear or maintenance issues with SSD?
- How will the RAM capacity affect scratch disk hits, etc?
- Which programs will benefit from more ram?
- Which programs will benefit from faster CPUs?
- Which programs will benefit from more cores?
- Should I buy Apple Care?
- Which upgrades should I buy through Apple vs. 3rd parties?