Mac Pro (or iMac?) specs recommendations for Wacom Cintiq artist?

Question

Level 1

0 points

Mac Pro (or iMac?) specs recommendations for Wacom Cintiq artist?

I'm a fulltime cartoonist looking to upgrade from an Early 2009 iMac. I illustrate via a Wacom Cintiq (connected via MiniDisplay) and primarily use Photoshop CC and Manga Studio EX5 (both support multi-core CPU's). Average file size for illustration projects range from 200MB to 400MB, with a few reaching 750MB to almost 1GB. Animation (2D Flash) and video work (Final Cut, Premiere, After Effects) is done occassionally.

I'm wondering whether a Mac Pro (4 or 6 core) with dual 2GB GPU or an iMac i7 with single 4GB GPU would be more suitable for my type of work?

Since the Cintiq is essentially a secondary display (an interactive drawing tablet for those unfamiliar), is there any benefit to having a dual GPU? I would only have one other display (either a Mac display or LED monitor) installed.

I currently experience significant lag on my Cintiq when drawing while also playing an highdef H.264 video on my current iMac (only a 2-core). Would my type of work benefit from a 4-core vs. 6?

Thanks for your consideration.

- Mike

Mac Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.1)

Posted on Jan 18, 2014 3:44 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

mofauxchris

Level 1

4 points

Sep 14, 2016 7:23 AM in response to copetoons

I recently ran across significant lag in using Photoshop with my Cintiq 22 HDT.

The Mac I use is a Power Mac Workstation. Older frame but still a powerful machine.

After an upgrade to El Capitan (though I cannot be certain the upgrade was the culprit), the brushstrokes would appear seconds after I executed them (unacceptable) or, they'd skip over whole sections of curves just to connect the start point to the end point (also unacceptable).

After a few rounds of uninstalling the WACOM drivers, reinstalling different versions of those drivers, and half a dozen restarts, I noticed something strange: the lag wasn't consistent. Sometimes, it was crippling (for a professional digital artist), sometimes, it was barely there.

I noticed it depended on what Safari was doing or Slack (Safari in disguise) or Chrome. And, I came to an unsettling conclusion: web browsers operate with higher priority than something which moves the cursor around.

That seems very backward as far as was should be important to run a computer.

So, either the folks who wrote the latest El Capitan need to reconsider their priorities or, something messed with them on my computer.

In any case, giving the WacomTabletDriver.app process (you can find its PID in Activity Monitor) a negative value for its "niceness." Seems to have fixed everything so far.

Look up the command "renice." You can use it to change the priority of processes by altering their "niceness."

Negative values are less "nice," gobbling up more resources for themselves, making them higher priority.

It took me a few weeks to find this solution.

So, I hope this helps someone to avoid some trouble.

Reply