Hi,
I am very interested in the new mac mini quad (server) to use as an aperture workstation. I currently have a 3 year old iMac. I am sure everything will work fine, but I don't understand the impact of the HD3000 graphics in the server model on aperture. I know aperture uses the gpu and cpu both.
You can step down to the dual core machine and get a dedicated GPU. But I would be trading CPU power for GPU power. Again, I don't know how much a difference this would make in the Aperture world.
I would also run the max ram 8Gb and probably strip (raid 0) the drives for faster reads of raw files.
Thanks for any opinions.
Jeff
I have always gone with a dedicated GPU for graphic applications.
I must admit I am like yourself not too sure what you would be trading off in the way of speed for a quad with IGP vs Dual with a GPU.
Aperture really does favor the GPU more the than CPU but it also uses a lot of the RAM, if it can get it’s little paws on to it.
I started off my machine with 2gb and aperture used up about 700mb of it. I then put in 8GB and it now uses up over 3gb at times. I don’t blame it as I would rather it used up what was there rather than leaving the space alone.
Personally I would try and get a shot on both machines and do some adjustments to see what one feels quicker to yourself.
Also have a look for benchmark results on the internet for mac mini.
Hi guys,
This topic comes up a lot on here, and unfortunately there’s no easy answer. The truth is that Aperture uses just about every component of the Mac, so you really don’t want to squander on anything.
Here’s something I wrote a while ago about the new iMacs that may help you. But unfortunately without direct comparisons, it’s a bit of a guess. This is based off what I know or believe.
The Adjustments in Aperture are rendered on the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit). My understanding is that, like regular RAM, the more VRAM you have, the more the computer can keep in memory at once, without “paging” (moving data between really fast memory and somewhere else, not as fast). This doesn’t necessarily speed up an operation, but once you stack multiple operations (multiple adjustments), it can keep more stored in the fastest memory possible. This adds up to a Good Thing™. As you pile on adjustments, or move between adjusted images, I’d imagine that this will slow down later than it would with less VRAM.
Lots of VRAM and a fast GPU have always been good for Aperture, and in most cases, more important than the CPU. For the extra $100, I’d definitely move from the 1GB to the 2GB card.
I suppose it all depends on your budget. The solid state + conventional HD option is sweet, which will definitely speed up the entire system. Adding a fast RAID on Thunderbolt to store your photos will also speed things up. Aperture is one of those apps that uses just about everything in the system, so there’s no item in there that’s not worth upgrading. I’m sorry to say :)
-Joseph @ApertureExpert
@PhotoJoseph
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Just a quick note on Aperture and GPU. My 2008 MacPro came with the optional 8800GT graphics card with 512MB VRAM. I recently installed the 5870 with 1GB VRAM. Can’t really tell for sure how much difference in Aperture performance it has made. I mainly did it for FCP X and future proofing.
I’m using iStat Menus to monitor VRAM usage and the GPU RAM is around 20% used with or without Aperture running. Even switching to a RAW image with a whole bunch of adjustments, cloning etc brushed in I couldn’t tell any difference in the amount of VRAM used. I’m not disputing the GPU gets big usage in Aperture, but I’m saying on my Mac Pro I’m not using anywhere near the 1GB VRAM.
Interestingly, installing Lion seemingly doubled the VRAM usage over Snow Leopard. I was only showing about 10% VRAM usage with Snow Leopard.
Thomas