New MP about to arrive - advice on storage, etc. pls...

[BKK-OZ]

Yah - weird, annoying problems tho - like having to download drivers for my logitech trackball to function properly.

I mean, really? Is this mouse that special I need to have the whole logitech 'control center' for it to work properly? You would think a modern OS like Mavericks would be past all that. hmph.

I am also struggling with a silly thing with my Dell U2711 monitor - it is only working in low res at the moment. Mr Google has found me some work-arounds, but so far, they all involve command line tweaks, and I just don't want to (nor do I think I really should have to) go there. At the moment, my nice big juicy monitor and my oh-so-fast computer kind of remind me of an Amiga ST I used to own, big fuzzy fonts everywhere...

Funny too - this thing came today from Apple, shipped yesterday, and yet, when I first powered it up and checked, it wanted ~600meg of downloads thru the App store as updates.

It may sound like I am grumbling, but, well, I guess I am. I would have expected a bit more (being able to use a mouse and having a pretty standard monitor work properly) without a whole lot of mucking around.

Anywaze... off to Google land to see if I can get a fix sorted for this monitor, this screen is driving me crazy.

[HCMarkus]

You might want to look/post here: http://forums.macrumors.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1

[BKK-OZ]

Thanx for that link - posts there confirmed what I gleaned from other sources.

The only way to get full resolution on the new MP and my Dell is to go Mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort. Some people seem to think that the only way to do that is with the dual-link adapter, but AFAIK, I can get away with the much cheaper and simpler mini-full adapter.

Spent a bunch of hours last night setting everything up - kinda freaked me out when Mail started (and would not stop) downloading several gigs worth of messages from my mail server. Oh well, now I have those messages safely stored in three places - old MP, new MP and up on the server.

Haven't run DP up on it yet.

[mikehalloran]

it wanted ~600meg of downloads thru the App store as updates.

At the end of January, a whole slew of updates were released. Apparently, yours was burned with an older Master. This is fairly common but 600G? That's huge ... Oh, I see 600Meg. Heck the iMovie update alone was 3x that size - really, I updated a friend's iMac yesterday so I remember that one at nearly 1.8G.

[BKK-OZ]

Ha! - I skipped the iMovie update. (I have FCP, though I haven't run it up yet on the new MP.)

It is taking forever to get set up, I had my old machine for ~3 years, so much to transfer, so much to archive, but I guess I shouldn't complain.

It is tres' snappy.

How powerful is it?
It scares Chuck Norris.

[BKK-OZ]

Excellent, balanced and thorough article on the new MP on architosh.

[Julia123]

How is the new MP working with DP?

[BKK-OZ]

The new MP is now up and running fully with DP - took a long time to reinstall everything and test it all out. The lack of DVD drive is actually a real hassle, I have resorted to accessing content on my old MP via Ethernet, copying over disk images, installing, then deleting the image after the install. Not everything works that way though, so it has caused me some extra time and heartache to get things sorted.

The first build of Mavericks caused me a few problems, and there are still somethings for Apple to sort out there, such as my keyboard not being recognised properly on boot (I have to go into System Preferences every time for the function keys, etc. to work correctly), but on the whole, me is happy.

In terms of performance, like I have said before, this thing is fast and powerful, so powerful that it intimidates Chuck Norris. It is very very fast to boot, (I haven't timed it, but my guess would be 10secs) and DP projects open almost instantly. It doesn't break a sweat no matter how many tracks/plugs I throw at it, and it is very quiet too.

I still haven't sorted the storage thing yet, prob. this week, probably the Pegasus R4, with 4x Toshiba 2TB drives.

[Julia123]

The new MP is now up and running fully with DP - took a long time to reinstall everything and test it all out. The lack of DVD drive is actually a real hassle, I have resorted to accessing content on my old MP via Ethernet, copying over disk images, installing, then deleting the image after the install. Not everything works that way though, so it has caused me some extra time and heartache to get things sorted.

The first build of Mavericks caused me a few problems, and there are still somethings for Apple to sort out there, such as my keyboard not being recognised properly on boot (I have to go into System Preferences every time for the function keys, etc. to work correctly), but on the whole, me is happy.

In terms of performance, like I have said before, this thing is fast and powerful, so powerful that it intimidates Chuck Norris. It is very very fast to boot, (I haven't timed it, but my guess would be 10secs) and DP projects open almost instantly. It doesn't break a sweat no matter how many tracks/plugs I throw at it, and it is very quiet too.

I still haven't sorted the storage thing yet, prob. this week, probably the Pegasus R4, with 4x Toshiba 2TB drives.

Thanks for the update! Thanks for the warning about the DVD drive as well. I plan to install everything one by one also. I'm still trying to decide between an iMac i7 with 3T fusion drive (that's how it's packaged at the Apple store), and a trash can MP. The MP ends up costing far more even at the base version since I will need a monitor that is as nice as my iMac and probably would end up purchasing a DVD drive. How many core's did you choose? I don't do nearly as extensive work as you but I'm thinking of adding Vienna Orch to my set up. From what I understand, the more core's the better with them. I'm thinking of a slave as a back up if I still need to go that route after all of this is set up.

[BKK-OZ]

I went with the 6-core with the slightly higher clock speed, because I do motion graphics and 3d animation as well. From what I have read, the performance difference isn't all that great btwn the new MP and the new iMacs, it is more of a function of form-factor and what you need/prefer. I plan on keeping my old MP for as long as it can run reasonably up to date OS's, partly for redundancy, partly for the drive thing, partly because I can use it as a render-slave.

I don't do the Vienna thing, and I doubt that a slave would be needed for either the new MP or a new iMac. With TB, you don't have disk I/O as a bottleneck, and as long as you have enough RAM, I would think either new machine could carry all but the most demanding loads.

[KarlSutton]

I've got a MP 8 core with 32RAM up & running - it is handling lots of VI's at 256 with very little hit to the processing - syncing to a large prores quicktime video.

Diggin' it!