rMBP users, advice please!


SkimMilk

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Not sure if this is where I should be posting, but really duno where else to post this question.

Currently I'm thinking of getting a retina MacBook Pro, but am undecided which is the best option.
Will be using LR4 and PS6 on the device.
I've never used a Mac before so I can't gauge how it's going to perform with LR and PS.
Is the 13" 8GB ram, 2.6GHz one enough to run these programs?
Or should I opt for higher RAM + CPU or even go up to 15" and get the one with discrete GPU?

I'll be paying for the notebook via instalment and will want to be able to use it for the next 3~5 years.

All MBP user's opinion are welcome!
 

Not sure if this is where I should be posting, but really duno where else to post this question.

Currently I'm thinking of getting a retina MacBook Pro, but am undecided which is the best option.
Will be using LR4 and PS6 on the device.
I've never used a Mac before so I can't gauge how it's going to perform with LR and PS.
Is the 13" 8GB ram, 2.6GHz one enough to run these programs?
Or should I opt for higher RAM + CPU or even go up to 15" and get the one with discrete GPU?

I'll be paying for the notebook via instalment and will want to be able to use it for the next 3~5 years.

All MBP user's opinion are welcome!

If you are using mainly for editing, you may want to have large RAM space and HD space, cause when you open 2 or more editing software at the same time, 8gb may not be enough. 13" or 15".. Depends on you as I personally like bigger screen so I got a 15" and link up with a 21" monitor when I'm in office and 15" is just right if I'm working outdoor. My first gen unibody mbp still working and it's going on strong for 6 years. So if u planning to use for long term you may want to have pick up higher SSD space. My new rMBP is 15" 16gb ram, 512gb SSD. Using external 2TB as extra storage. Current version of rMBP don't allow user to upgrade SSD space.. FYI...
 

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If you are using mainly for editing, you may want to have large RAM space and HD space, cause when you open 2 or more editing software at the same time, 8gb may not be enough. 13" or 15".. Depends on you as I personally like bigger screen so I got a 15" and link up with a 21" monitor when I'm in office and 15" is just right if I'm working outdoor. My first gen unibody mbp still working and it's going on strong for 6 years. So if u planning to use for long term you may want to have pick up higher SSD space. My new rMBP is 15" 16gb ram, 512gb SSD. Using external 2TB as extra storage. Current version of rMBP don't allow user to upgrade SSD space.. FYI...

Thanks for sharing! The info about ram is really helpful!
I'm actually quite comfortable with the 13" screen size, plus I'm worried the 15" may be a little too heavy for lugging around.

For the SSD, as far as I know, it's PCI-e based n can be removed. But, there's no replacement component available as of now. Ram is soldered on board so that's something that must be decided beforehand.

I'll definitely be using external hdds for storage as well. The new thunderbolt specs are impressive, but thunderbolt hdds are still priced way too high at the moment.

Really appreciate the feedback ArchAngelz! At least now I'll definitely go for a 16GB model. Now to decide on size and CPU...
 

At least now I'll definitely go for a 16GB model. Now to decide on size and CPU...
CPU is not crucial for your work unless you want to do massive batch job editing. It doesn't hurt to step down on CPU and have more RAM instead. If you have SSD then a big bottleneck is solved, the fastest CPU is pointless if it needs to wait for data from HDD.
 

CPU is not crucial for your work unless you want to do massive batch job editing. It doesn't hurt to step down on CPU and have more RAM instead. If you have SSD then a big bottleneck is solved, the fastest CPU is pointless if it needs to wait for data from HDD.

SSD most probably getting the 512GB one, while CPU I'm still undecided as I intend to bootcamp and run soem win 2012 VMs for learning.
Thanks for your input though! :D
 

Take note that most Adobe apps are not really optimized for multicore processors, until they do, the performance will always be muted.
 

Should clarify, Adobe apps not really optimized under OSX environment...

I've been googling around but I haven't really seen anything that says Adobe apps aren't optimized for OS X. I saw a few reports about slow performance but those reports were talking about software in a 32bit environment. During that period, Apple was still in the 32bit era, thus Adobe apps ran slow on those machines.

Do you have any reference links to enlighten us?
 

Take note that most Adobe apps are not really optimized for multicore processors, until they do, the performance will always be muted.
Even if a single application is not optimized (whatever that means in detail), with an underlying OS that is capable of distributing workload to multiple cores the app should work well. Put an old Excel 2003 on any Win7 and watch the core utilization when you run VBS scripts or other old stuff. Do the same on Win XP, watch.
 

I've been googling around but I haven't really seen anything that says Adobe apps aren't optimized for OS X. I saw a few reports about slow performance but those reports were talking about software in a 32bit environment. During that period, Apple was still in the 32bit era, thus Adobe apps ran slow on those machines.

Do you have any reference links to enlighten us?

32bit systems have finite/limited memory addressing issues (eg three-point-something GB of addressable RAM), so this poses problems for very large files that would easily swamp all the available RAM and slow down overall performance as the OS keeps swapping huge blocks of memory between RAM and HDD.

Compared to 64bit the addressing capacity is very much larger hence images can practically load into the entire RAM without the OS needing to swap-in/out the pagefiles which is inefficient & typically plagued 32 bit systems.

That said, more important is the # of CPU cores that can be concurrently used by the same application.

No doubt most recent Adobe apps are written in 64bit recently, but they don't appear work in multicore CPU, but under some cases like 3D rendering, video editing,etc, which may not be used frequently in DP workflow. Saw similar observations on my Macbook when running CS6. But as the newer versions, their efficiency/performance should improve over time.

Here and here are some sources to verify this.

Only a handful of OSX apps like Pixelmator are fully optimized for OSX multicore CPU/GPU hardware, otherwise they wouldn't be haughtily claiming their apps are best-tuned for OSX (another example is FCP X which Apple proclaims)
 

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Even if a single application is not optimized (whatever that means in detail), with an underlying OS that is capable of distributing workload to multiple cores the app should work well. Put an old Excel 2003 on any Win7 and watch the core utilization when you run VBS scripts or other old stuff. Do the same on Win XP, watch.

That is not the true meaning of multicore performance if the OS schedules/assigns which apps allocated to any processor core. The OS will assign one core resource to that non-multicore app, while it assigns other routines and functions belonging or related to supporting subsystem to other available cores.

If I am not mistaken, MS Excel 2003 and earlier are not multiprocessor-aware apps. Only later versions are.

Apologies if I digress.
 

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