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Sorry but unless this is a glorified exec office decoration, professionals care about the specs very much, especially at that resolution and price tag
by rubber_duck 10y ago
Sorry but unless this is a glorified exec office decoration, professionals care about the specs very much, especially at that resolution and price tag
- porkloin 10y agoI work in an office of graphic designers, and they all have overpowered hardware that they bought thinking they needed the latest and greatest to run Photoshop and Illustrator. They don't need a breakneck GPU - they need a device like this that gives them new, intuitive input options. That said, for any kind of 3D development this hardware isn't up to snuff. Anyway, the device seems more targeted at 2D graphic designers.
- mixedCase 10y agoThey do need high end hardware. They just have much better use for 128GB of RAM than for a GTX 1080. It's misplaced priorities due to lack of knowledge, not that they don't benefit from high-end hardware.
- monk_e_boy 10y agoAgree 100% there are thousands of offices out there with photoshop monkeys making web pages, signs, adverts, car wraps, promotional material, etc etc all of who would love to have one of these. All those ageing iMacs need to replaced soon.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- rubber_duck 10y agoWith 3-4k$ devices ? You can get two iMacs for that.
- mynameisvlad 10y agoNot with the same configuration you can't. An iMac comparable to the top of the line Surface Studio is 3399 vs 4199 for the Surface Studio. If we go for the 2999 Surface Studio, the comparable iMac is 2549. So, yes, you can get two, even three iMacs for the price of a Surface Studio, but the specs will be nowhere near the same between the two.
- rubber_duck 10y agoYes - and my point is that people running iMac truly don't care about the specs. I've said this in this tread before - you don't dump 4k$ on a desktop for mobile performance - when you spend that kind of cash you probably really need a high end workstation - think of the mac pro use case - and this device doesn't cut it as that.
- e12e 10y agoI'm no graphic professional - but I've just recently started playing at drawing on my i5/8gb Surface pro 4. It's great fun, and there are lots of options. But trying to draw on an 1200 dpi A3 canvas (unsurprisingly) doesn't really work very well. But if I were to use it professionally, some of the things I'd want to do was draw high resolution A2 to A0 prints. I've yet to play much with photoshop, so I'm not sure how well it handles a modest 20 megapixel image.
- denzil 10y agoI'm playing with drawing too on my Surface pro 2 and from my experience the program used for drawing seems to make a lot of difference. So it's worth experimenting a bit. For me using Clip Studio Paint seems best so far, as it has dedicated tablet mode UI and is responsive enough, thought 1200 dpi A3 will might be too much for it at times.
- KirinDave 10y agoHybrid drives are a good call for professional graphic designers and video editors. I have moved my video editing efforts to hybrid drives because of price/space ratios while maintaining performance. Pure SSDs only shine for gaming and compiling, and much more for the former than the later. A machine where you're constantly shuffling for space is no fun.
- thebakeshow 10y agoSSDs have a definite positive performance impact for editing photos, especially when using programs such as Lightroom that also manage photo libraries/databases
- vvanders 10y agoActually Lightroom works well with hybrid drives. You're using going to be building 1:1 previews anyway on a fast scratch drive and RAWs on a cheap storage option. Any RAWs you're working with will be in ram anyway.
- lips 10y agoDevelop mode definitely hits your raws. I just switched from SSD(1)-boot/SSD(2)-cache/HDD(1)-raws to full SSD and the difference was substantial. This looks like an amazing experience, I'm just worried about performance in my workflow. That said, the future is bright.
- 6stringmerc 10y agoCount audio as another environment where the hybrid drives make sense when paired with a suitable RAM amount. Nobody wants hiccups...but with the right USB 3.0 soundcard, RAM, and DAW, the output WAV files will stack up. Sure, uploading to cloud or network storage helps, but for general utility the hybrid scratches both performance and space itches.
- barkingcat 10y agoPure SSD's have come down in price so much that it's irresponsible to spec out a computer for professional use without one. The SSD impacts every single aspect of computer performance - from startup times, to application start times, to swap space speed, to reducing times when the computer is locked up loading from disk. And these days, a 1 TB SSD can be had for around $300 USD - at which point, there is no obvious need for shuffling for space. Of course, if you are needing the 3 TB drives for video editing, that's fine. The surface studio specs say 1TB or 2TB - so even at such a high price, I find it really disappointing that it's not offering the 1 TB SSD (which is probably the first aftermarket change I would make if I bought one). For many 3D graphics pros, you would run the OS on a 512G SSD, and load the assets onto a larger 3TB hybrid drive or even better, a 10TB RAID array, for example, but you can't discount how much performance that SSD drive brings just for loading the OS and the software (Maya, or Adobe suite, etc) Face it - any new machine today without an ssd is one where the manufacture is trying to claw back some profit.
- ProAm 10y ago> professionals care about the specs very much Says everyone that is still paying full price for a 3 year old MacBook Pro....
- helthanatos 10y agoThey should have jumped ship from Apple by now. What design programs are there that require osx? They can build a much better computer for the money. Isn't that why Apple stopped?
- helthanatos 10y agoCorrect me if I'm wrong?
- rickyc091 10y agoSketchApp (https://www.sketchapp.com/ https://www.sketchapp.com/) is being used a lot more than Photoshop / Illustrator for drafting wireframes and quick visual designs for web + mobile designs. Not to say that Photoshop / Illustrator aren't being used. Sketch is also more beginner friendly.
- helthanatos 10y agoInteresting. Thank you. The comments on this article are http://hackingui.com/sketch-design/a-year-using-sketch/ http://hackingui.com/sketch-design/a-year-using-sketch/ good to see the prevalance of the tools. I didn't know anything outside adobe was considered good.
- threeseed 10y agoNew MacBook Pro will be coming out tomorrow.
- r00fus 10y agoAt least that has an SSD (and a decent speed one at that). Seriously a 3yo Intel chip makes a much less difference than a good SSD.
- blahblah12 10y agoAll the designers I know on their MBP 13-inch/15-inch, without dGPUs will surely agree with these statements about needing the latest dGPU.
- rubber_duck 10y agoYou don't need a desktop for that kind of work in the first place, a laptop is way more convenient, you're probably going to want one even if you get this, and at that point you can just plug it in to a high end monitor for half the price of this. Hell you can buy a top of the line laptop with better specs for the other half. Doing video editing, 3D at that resolution, VR, etc. are the kind of workloads you need a desktop machine for - this doesn't cut it.
- Ant5do 10y agoMmmh, so I wonder why I know people with iMacs? This is precisely targeted at the cintiq + iMac market. The dGPU on this is roughly equivalent to the iMac.
- rubber_duck 10y agoiMacs are half the price of this ? This costs the same as high end laptop and a high end monitor combined. For the pricing this would need to compete with Mac Pro not iMac
- izacus 10y agoiMacs with a Cintiq certanly ARE NOT half the price of this. The Cintiq itself is very expensive.
- blahblah12 10y agoan iMac needs a cintiq to replicate this functionality. You're looking at 2.5k more and now you have a clunky thing plus a monitor.
- BinaryIdiot 10y ago> professionals care about the specs very much, especially at that resolution and price tag I did graphic work for many years and have worked with dozens of designers. None of them have ever been worried about specs. In fact the only person who even asked about them wanted a high end laptop so he could play video games on it at home. I am unconvinced designers care about specs unless they're working on something specific that requires very high performance (which the majority would NOT be doing).
- rubber_duck 10y agoI also worked as a designer and with designers, and the ones shelling out 4k$ on a work machine definitely do care about the specs. Basically this is in Mac Pro territory, not iMac/MacBook territory.
- K0SM0S 10y agoI think it should be obvious that "designer" means nothing, from a web guy doing basic 2D stuff to a CAD engineer in need of GPGPU passing by a video editor on CUDA, there are at least 3 entirely different needs/use-cases. Probably more as you try to cookie-cut cost/function.
- leonroy 10y agoI'm a pro. I'm an experienced programmer, amateur photographer, edit home videos a lot and do a bunch of computationally expensive tasks on my workstation. Whilst I'd like to have the absolute latest, cutting edge GPU from AMD/NVIDIA I also appreciate that sometimes last gen parts are cheaper, more reliable (having benefitted from refinement over the manufacturing run) and sometimes cooler running than what's new. I use a Mac (for the forseeable) because I'm quite happy to spend quite a bit extra on form and function over just absolute function. I'm not the only one, just look at Apple's bottom line. I think what Microsoft are doing here are going after Apple's (previously) target market, the so called pro user. Windows has typically been a value proposition so it will take them time and clearly ruffle the feathers of those who've built their own PCs and put Windows on top (I for one do that on my gaming PC). This is not a gaming PC. It's aimed at the iMac crowd. Apple's alienating a lot of professionals who value form and function by focusing on purely form and I think props should go to Microsoft for being the only company (as far as I can see) who is not copying Apple and producing some incredibly innovative new form factors in a very staid sector - the pro workstation.
- 9935c101ab17a66 10y agoI can kind of understanding skimping on the GPU because in a lot of cases it won't be necessary, and obsessing over high-power gpus for people who don't need them becomes unnecessary hand wringing. What I really can't get behind is the use of hybrid drives. That is really quite bad, and I can guarantee that anyone who uses this machine daily would notice a huge difference. The SSDs wouldn't have to be large capacity, but to not even offer them is pretty shocking TBH.
- K0SM0S 10y agoSomething tells me many "pros" feel exactly as you do. I wholeheartedly agree.
- rubber_duck 10y agoThe question is are you willing to drop 4k $ for this machine ? iMac crowd is dropping half of that for a pretty desktop that runs fine - I can see that. I don't see a lot of people buying a 4k$ device because it looks pretty. At that price range I need to be able to use it at least two years down the road and this is already outdated before release. It's just priced waay too high considering how weak the HW is, I would definitely skip this until they do a hardware update.
- jasonlotito 10y agohttps://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2016/10/26/the-surface-studio https://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2016/10/26/the-surfac... "I am intimately familiar with how it feels to create things on these sorts of devices and the Studio honestly feels like a generational leap forward. If you are a digital artist and you are currently working on a Cintiq you have to go to a MS store and look at the Studio. I’ve always given you my honest take on this stuff and this time is no different even though I can’t think of anything bad to say. If you draw on computers the Surface Studio is something very special."