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when I've plugged external displays into my 4 year old powerbook I haven't noticed any difference in performance. I'm sure that her powerbook would do just fine.

No cpmatibility issues. It's a display.

I have a nice pair of 19" LCDs, set me back $650 or so. Go to Best Buy, see what looks good, but it online. Be happy.

Check places like Costco and Sams Club. Consider a membership if you don't - you can save a decent amount of money on a good monitor there. I got my 22" Sceptre for $250 at Costco. They also carry Viewsonic and Dell.

I will say, though, if you can afford it that an Apple monitor is a great investment. They're solid displays and at 20" and bigger are SWOP certified. Maybe include some room in the budget for a calibration device.

Last edited by Gipetto (2007-08-06 7:05 pm)

DJ wrote:

But, what do you guys think about the 20 or 24 inch iMacs for a dedicated home workstation for graphic design?  Do they have enough VRAM and good video card choices so that it can handle graphic design as its primary function?

Graphics card has essentially dick to do with graphics design, unless you're using 3D Modeling and CAD apps. But Adobe CS3 doesn't really care whether it's running on a Top-Shelf Radeon or the lowliest integrated graphics.

I guess what I'm needing to know is would it be better, worse or the same as my wife's current powerbook G4 as far as processor intensive processing using Adobe CS3?

Yeah, the Core Duos in the iMacs should be about 3x as powerful as the CPU in your powerbook. Ludicrous speed. Obscene speed. You'll feel dirty for using it, but you'll love every minute of it.

I have heard good things about the current iMacs for this purpose, but am not sure how strong they are for this purpose.

Strong?

In terms of the basics (RAM, CPU, HD) they're great. The monitors are nice enough, although I don't think they're SWOP compliant, and iirc you can add an external anyway for the extra screen real estate and just use the internal for palettes and such.

I currently have a Rev A iMac G5, and the fan runs most of the time rendering it useless for a graphic designer...it would drive them insane to listen to the fans all day.

::insert impolite comment here::

As somebody who has to work in a pretty noisy environment all day, and who does a fair amount of prepress work, I really don't have a lot of sympathy on that score.

However, the G5s run warmer than the Core Duo 2s. So, in theory, the new iMacs should be cooler, need less fan-running time, and therefore be quieter.

I suspect there's something wrong with your iMac. My grandparents (both musicians and very persnickety about noise) have a G5 iMac and love it. When I've had a chance to use it for a bit, it's been pretty damned quiet. It certainly shouldn't run the fan more than the G4 Powerbook does.

So would the current iMacs be a good choice for a graphic designer on a budget?  Or should we just go with an external monitor for now, and then upgrade to a Mac Pro in a year or 2 when we can afford it?

And you don't wonder if the Mac Pro isn't going to be louder than the iMac?

I think the 20" or 24" iMac would be an excellent choice.

mrreet2001 wrote:

dvpierce wrote:

And you don't wonder if the Mac Pro isn't going to be louder than the iMac?

Shouldn't the mac pro be a lot quieter due to the fact it was designed for cooling efficiency instead of being a pretty thing that sits on you desk.

Maybe. But it's also a bigger machine with more heat generating parts and more need for cooling. And more fans that, at full tilt, are 1) louder and 2) push a lot more air.

The flipside is that the smaller fans in the iMac will produce a higher-pitched whine, compared to the lower-pitched "Fan of Doom" sound favored by the 80mm and 120mm fans found in most towers.

In any case, I don't own one of either, and without having had one of each on my desk for a week, it's all speculation.

FutureDreamz wrote:

dvpierce wrote:

mrreet2001 wrote:

Shouldn't the mac pro be a lot quieter due to the fact it was designed for cooling efficiency instead of being a pretty thing that sits on you desk.

Maybe. But it's also a bigger machine with more heat generating parts and more need for cooling. And more fans that, at full tilt, are 1) louder and 2) push a lot more air.

The flipside is that the smaller fans in the iMac will produce a higher-pitched whine, compared to the lower-pitched "Fan of Doom" sound favored by the 80mm and 120mm fans found in most towers.

In any case, I don't own one of either, and without having had one of each on my desk for a week, it's all speculation.

iMac running 24/7 for quite a few weeks so far, I still can't hear it unless I practically have my ear on it.

Thank you. Not only does that confirm my suspicions (which makes me look smart!) but it also makes me want an iMac even more. (Curse you!!!)

As a designer, I can't say that I recommend iMacs. They're an all-in-one package and you're forced to replace the whole shabang once the computer feels too slow. In this industry we get tired of hardware every 2-4 years, and a nice display can last a lot longer then that.

Look at Dell and Samsung displays. Apple displays are great, but if you can live without a perdy Apple case, you're probably going to save several hundred bucks. Moreover, read reviews online before you buy.

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As for her PowerBook G4 1.5 with CS3, god bless her for putting up with that. I tried CS3 on the exact same machine and immediately started to get frustrated with the poor performance. I downgraded, and am still running, CS1 on that machine.

If she or her employer insist on running CS3, you should consider getting an Intel mac at some point in time.

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You might want to consider keeping the PowerBook around, or selling it to raise some funds for a MacBook. If she's anything like everyone else I work with or know, she'll want a portable computer to interact with clients, show her work outside of the home, and or easily plugin to someone else's projector.

Personally, I think the best cost / practically bet is a big eternal monitor and a nice laptop. You'll have something that works on the go, and have a decent monitor when you come home.

I love coming back here the next morning to find more good posts.

Thanks again guys.  And for those of you commented on me not being so sensitive to sound, I agree I am oversensitive to it, but so is the wife, and its not something we can help, so it is definitely going to factor into this purchase.

DVPierce, I have to say I am very surprised that having a powerful video card doesn't improve CS3 performance.  I just assumed that it had to help somehow and would be very important to graphic designers. 

So, since you said it would even be fine on a machine with integrated graphics, how do you suppose would the Mac Mini fair in the realm of being a dedicated graphic design engine?  If it were to perform just as well as an iMac or Mac Pro, (or close to it), then this might actually be a good solution.  It would allow us to have a separate monitor (so we could upgrade CPUs in a few years and not replace the display) and it would take up so little room.  I wouldn't know what to expect as far as fan noise, so I would have to look into that.

In reference to you saying that you think my iMac has something wrong with it, I totally agree.  This fan noise issue has been a huge thorn in my side since I got the iMac.  In fact I took it to the Apple Store here in Austin about a year ago now for them to fix it.  They said there were no hardware failures.  The girl at the counter told me that after having it for a week and a half they did find something to fix, but it was somehow a software issue, mind you they did not erase and reinstall, nor did they archive and install, so I am cluelass as to what they could have done (maybe something in terminal?).  When I pushed her for an explanation she said she wasn;t a repair tech and wasn't sure what was done.  I would say the issue improved slightly, meaning that if my iMac is left on without running any apps, and just sits at the desktop, that before the repair the fans would have kicked in after about 15 minutes, and after the repair it took maybe 20-25.  But they still kick in too soon and for no apparent reason.  I am still under AppleCare for a few more months so I may take it in again, if I can stand to be without it again.

In any case, as far as my "Mac Mini for graphic design" question above, does anyone have any thoughts there?

Gipetto wrote:

I'm not sure that I'd go as low as a Mac Mini - it has a Core Duo processor (single core) as opposed to a Core2Duo (dual core) that's in the Mac Pro and MacBook Pro. That and it has integrated graphics. Despite the statement above that CS3 won't care about the video card I will say that I'd prefer a dedicated video chip with its own ram, the integrated graphics will siphon off system ram in the Mini or MacBook (not Pro).

I was under the impression that the Minis were dual core, but that the chip was an older design? (Core Solo & Core Duo vs. Core 2 Duo?) The Apple Store indicates the minis are dual core. They've dropped the 1.5 GHz "Core Solo" model from the lineup.

And yes, there is a slight performance boost from using dedcated graphics, but if you have a proper dual-channel memory setup and 2GBs of RAM, it's a small (like <5%, usually) hit.

The big mark against the mini for me is the 2.5" HD, although if OPs wife is using a laptop now, I don't imagine that will be as big a deal for her.

DJ wrote:

DVPierce, I have to say I am very surprised that having a powerful video card doesn't improve CS3 performance.  I just assumed that it had to help somehow and would be very important to graphic designers.

Well, a little important (see above.) Graphics cards make a little bit of difference in 2D, but most of the transistors on the card are dedicated for 3-D processing, which is used mostly by games. Quartz uses some GPU functions, as do RT Effects in iMovie, and some other apps, but 90% of it is games and CS3 doesn't really fall into the other 10%.

Having a moderately powerful GPU isn't a bad idea; dedicated VRAM is helpful, and you never know when the Nanosaur bug might hit you, after all, but none of the currently shipping Macs have one that is inadequate.

In all honestly: with all the advantages a 17" iMac has over the Mini, it's like getting a 17" LCD, keyboard and mouse for free. Stepping up to a 20" or 24", with a dedicated GPU and a ludicrously huge (by comparison) monitor... that's just sex.

But I wouldn't get a mini.

Oops, my mistake, I thought the mini's were still in single core hell.
I'd still prefer a dedicated card though. The OS is making more and more use of OpenGL in the UI, and while that is easily handled by an integrated graphics chip I still prefer to have more power than I need, call me paranoid. Its just funny to think that right now an iMac fits that bill... I've been buying towers for so long that its really weird to think an iMac can do the job, and do it very very well.

I think the kicker for me is that every desktop model of Mac right now has a socketed processor... so just about every model, difficulty of getting to the innards aside, is upgradeable. The stigma of the all in one machine getting obsolete fast is broken now.

dvpierce wrote:

DJ - A mini will do the job, don't misunderstand me. I use my G4 mini with some portable audio/video equipment and it makes a great portable studio.

An iMac will just do it better.

Thanks for clarifying  

As far as my wife's computer needs go, I'm not sure which way we will eventually go.  I was sort of leaning toward iMac, but then after I saw the new iMacs, I was a bit underwhelmed.  I'm sure I read somewhere the new iMacs would be "completely new form factor"  which isn't the case here.  It really is just an anorexic version of my iMac, with some brushed metal and black gloss accents.  Don't get me wrong, I'm sure they are great machines, I just wanted to see somethng totally different...like when the flat panel iMac G4s came out...that blew me away.

So now I'm not sure what we will end up doing.  If the Apple Store will ever come back up, I read a small blurb in the Q&A from the media even today stating that the Mac Minis got a spec bump today, so we'll see...eventually.

I'm not the only one, right?  As of this post (3:53 PM central time), the Apple Store is still down getting updated for everyone?

As for the pervious MacMini question. I don't think they are bad little systems to run Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. Heck, my art director uses one. At the very lease CS3 will feel a lot faster then it does on the 1.5ghz g4.

In my humble opinion, they're biggest drawback is the 1920 by 1200 display resolution. If you want something that supports bigger displays, you need something else.

I would tell your wife to put some big files on a disk and test these machines at an Apple store. Do a couple big rotation and transformation tasks. See what they feel like.

Most Apple stores have CS3 installed on just about everything.