OSX vs Windows 10 for Pre-Press...

[PricelineNegotiator]

As a professional who troubleshoots and builds computers for other businesses and individuals on my spare time, I am baffled by DYP's memory use. Is that DDR3 or DDR4 that you are using on that machine? Is it ECC by chance?

 

[DYP]

48 GB 1333 MHz DDR3

What do you think is not normal? What are you baffled by?

All the years I have been running Unix/Linux kernels it seems pretty normal to me in the way it uses all the resources available to it. Even though this is a six year old machine It cranks right along and everything I do is pretty much instantaneous. Once in a while I update some software that needs the machine to reboot, so it does get rebooted maybe four of five times a year. I usually try to shut it down at least twice a year just to vacuum and blow the dust out of it, but other than that or some odd software glitch there is no need for rebooting.

By the way I have another MacPro here that is 2 years older that only has 16gb of Ram in it and I don't like using it because it is definitely slower, but it also only has a normal SSD running off that SATA buss for the boot drive.

 

[PricelineNegotiator]

I'm not extremely well-versed in memory, but 1333 MHz is a very slow clock speed compared to modern memory sticks, and DDR3 is not modern in the computational world, so you might be suffering problems due to inefficient use of your memory due to those two things. I have 16 GB of DDR4 @ 3200 MHz in my system currently, and never have any multitasking issues. It could also just be the fact that you are using a Mac. Only a guess in that department, as I don't have any empirical data to show similar workloads between our iMac 5k and my machine, which have almost the same specifications.

 

[kdw75]

Another factor that was always lurking in the back of my mind was fixability. If my iMac had a hardware failure, a quick fix would be out of the question. We would have to buy a new Mac and get our fixed when possible. A Windows machine on the other hand would be easily fixed by throwing in a new part.

 

[kdw75]

On another note, on the Mac it seems like Command Worksstation uses an awful lot of RAM while just sitting idle. I am seeing around 3-4 Gig. used.

 

[wonderings]

Another factor that was always lurking in the back of my mind was fixability. If my iMac had a hardware failure, a quick fix would be out of the question. We would have to buy a new Mac and get our fixed when possible. A Windows machine on the other hand would be easily fixed by throwing in a new part.

Not exactly true. Some factors make it pretty liveable. If you are close to an Apple store and still have AppleCare they move pretty fast. I have had logic board replacements done for next day. The screen on my old MacBook Pro was replaced in 2 days, would have been 1 but it had to be shipped in. Something was done to my iMac 5K as well, cannot remember now what it was but had it done next day.

Not sure how fast they are out of warranty.

 

[DYP]

I'm not extremely well-versed in memory, but 1333 MHz is a very slow clock speed compared to modern memory sticks, and DDR3 is not modern in the computational world, so you might be suffering problems due to inefficient use of your memory due to those two things. I have 16 GB of DDR4 @ 3200 MHz in my system currently, and never have any multitasking issues. It could also just be the fact that you are using a Mac. Only a guess in that department, as I don't have any empirical data to show similar workloads between our iMac 5k and my machine, which have almost the same specifications.

Actually the way the RAM buss works on MacPro 5.1 motherboards is when the chips are inserted in pairs of three the buss is running 3999 MHz. That is why I only have 48gb. At the time I would have had to go to 48gb using three 8gb chips or 96gb using 16gb chip to get that buss speed. 64gb would have slowed the timing down. 16gb chips were pretty expensive in 2012.

 

[PricelineNegotiator]

Actually the way the RAM buss works on MacPro 5.1 motherboards is when the chips are inserted in pairs of three the buss is running 3999 MHz. That is why I only have 48gb. At the time I would have had to go to 48gb using three 8gb chips or 96gb using 16gb chip to get that buss speed. 64gb would have slowed the timing down. 16gb chips were pretty expensive in 2012.

Yes, I understand how double and triple channel memory operates. There's also several generations of new Intel chipsets that use memory more effectively. I believe that dismissing your results with your memory is unwise, but I don't see any reason why you can compare your results of DDR3 + a 4th or 5th gen Intel chip and older m.2 PCIe drive to DDR4, 8th gen Intel chips and also PCIe drives that operate at nearly twice the read/write speed of yours as apples-to-apples. I'll try to get some screenshots of our iMac 5k under typical/heavy loads in the next week.

 

[DYP]

Yes, I understand how double and triple channel memory operates. There's also several generations of new Intel chipsets that use memory more effectively. I believe that dismissing your results with your memory is unwise, but I don't see any reason why you can compare your results of DDR3 + a 4th or 5th gen Intel chip and older m.2 PCIe drive to DDR4, 8th gen Intel chips and also PCIe drives that operate at nearly twice the read/write speed of yours as apples-to-apples. I'll try to get some screenshots of our iMac 5k under typical/heavy loads in the next week.

I am not trying to compare any results. I originally was just making a comment that adding more RAM to older equipment can improve performance. I can live with 2012 MacPro 5.1 performance just fine. I see no reason why you want to make a argument out of this. I don't try to do what I do with a Windows computer so I have no way of comparing them other than my RIP machines which need to be able to RIP jobs and keep the printer going so I use them for nothing else. People can use what they want for what ever they need. Only observation I can make is the different OS kernels seem to use RAM differently. May experience with a MacPro and OS seems to be that it runs so much better with lots of RAM. I have no experience with Windows computers with more than 32gb of RAM so I really don't know if more RAM really is that beneficial on them. It doesn't seem to be with our Wide Format RIP as it never seem use very much RAM when it does have it available. Why that is I don't know, when the Mac Unix kernel seems to use almost all of its RAM.

 

[DYP]

As a follow up to get more speed out of the Windows RIP computer. Would using a PCIE NVMe M.2 Internal SSD as the boot drive be more beneficial than more RAM which the Colorgate RIP on Windows combination don't seem to be able to use much of.

 

[PricelineNegotiator]

As a follow up to get more speed out of the Windows RIP computer. Would using a PCIE NVMe M.2 Internal SSD as the boot drive be more beneficial than more RAM which the Colorgate RIP on Windows combination don't seem to be able to use much of.

Yes. Are you currently using a HDD or normal SATA SSD? What is the current amount of memory, DDR3 or DDR4, and what is the clock frequency?