Does anyone know how Adobe CS3 would run on a G5 compared to CS2? I’ve got a G5 at work and a Mac Pro indoors and was wondering if I could talk my boss into upgrading (he might do if there was a speed increase, or another sell-able reason I could put to him)

Thanks

Re: CS3 on a G5? worth upgrading?

[quote author=“YanHead”]Does anyone know how Adobe CS3 would run on a G5 compared to CS2? I’ve got a G5 at work and a Mac Pro indoors and was wondering if I could talk my boss into upgrading (he might do if there was a speed increase, or another sell-able reason I could put to him)

I’ve been testing CS3 Design and Web on a 1.67GHz PowerBook G4, and even on a pre-G5 machine there is a noticeable improvement in launch time and over all performance. The performance improvement in Photoshop CS3 alone was so great that I switched from CS2 during the beta test phase and never looked back.

You also have better cross-application file support, and although there are some interface changes, the new unified interface design makes it easier to jump between applications.

If you live in Adobe Creative Suite, the upgrade may well be worth it for you.

Jeff

I have tried CS3 on my MacBook (2.0 GHz Core Duo with 2 GB RAM) and I agree that the interface improvements are nice. It has a way of shrinking the palettes to a little thumbnail icon unless you click on them, which is very nice when you are forced to work with limited screen space.

The speed increase will, of course, be even more pronounced on the Mac Pro (if you update it as well) because CS3 is the first Universal version of the Creative Suite.

I’ll go out on a limb and say the improvements may be less critical if you’re already working on a fast machine that runs CS2 natively and always have a large display attached.

The speed increase on an Intel machine running CS3 is immediately noticeable and absolutely worth the price of upgrading.

I have demonstrated to colleagues that the efficiency gains of CS3’s integration and improved file browsing and new roundtrip editing capabilities (ie Dreamweaver to Photoshop) alone take productivity into the red zone.

If you couple these interface-derived efficiencies with the power that comes from marrying CS3 with an Intel chip - for which, of course, it has been optimised - then you have some very real gains to be made.

This, of course, means you can focus more on doing your job better than you did it last week, because instead of wasting time getting a job off the ground, you can focus your time on your creativity.

Once you have CS3 running, you should invite your boss to see just how much more efficient you have become. Of course, he won’t need to visit your desk to do that. You can screencast him using Adobe Connect (part of all CS3 packages) with the new tricks you’ve discovered. Yesterday I attended an Adobe presentation in which the demonstrator was 1000km away, screencasting his CS3 demonstration to our Windows-based network, with the output screened up using a projector. Pretty damn cool. Would have been better if not for network lag.

I have CS2 on a G5 iMac and CS3 on an Intel iMac right here. If it’s merely a speed differential you want, I can run comparisons on identical images running PS filters.

But the real beauty of CS3 is the productivity gains that come from a synergous relationship between the world’s best creativity apps that once belonged in two separate boxes but now come together as one.