Vista v. OSX and PS CS3

[jaypie77]

So I've been working on OSX and Windows interchangeably for the last 3 years, but I'm about to commit to huge personal investment now that I'm hitting my upgrade cycle. I was using CS2 on both platforms and I found that they generally had the same level of performance...

Anyway, it's now possible to run Windows on Macs and I haven't seen a well-done conclusive study comparing Photoshop CS3 performance on OSX compared with Vista. I did see two poor-quality "studies" on a couple websites, but both seemed weak and their results were greatly conflicting.

My question: does anybody know of better studies/benchmarks comparing PS CS3 between OSX and Vista? Does anybody have recent experience with CS3 on these two platforms (and a lack of bias)?

[rivan]

I've got daily personal experience in CS3 XP and CS2 OSX (we should be getting CS3 in the next few months). The only thing that seems significantly faster about CS3 is Bridge.

From a photography perspective, I'm of the opinion that a similarly equipped (roughly equivalent processors and RAM), non-bargain basement, modern machine with either OS will perform more than adequately. While you might find gaussian blur might be .7 seconds faster in OSX according to MacWorld's 200 meg test file, you're really going to net out about the same in a day-to-day workflow.

A 16MP image from the 1DsMkII is roughly 50M, which is still a very manageable file on a modern machine. It's rare, even when working in 16-bit, that I'll see a progress bar long enough to irritate me on either platform, unless I'm working on billboard-sized stuff with files headed into the multiple-gigabytes for file-size.

If you're talking about batch processing, both machines are likely fettered by read/write speed more than anything else, and if you're concerned with that, get faster hard disk performance either through an interface switch (SCSI/Fibre), RAID, faster drives (raptor) or come combination of those.

My suggestion? Monetary factors aside, go with the OS you prefer working in. I rather prefer working with OSX - the interface is more comfortable to me after more than 15 years on a Mac.

The reality at home, however my machine supports a hobby - I can't justify the heavy premium Apple charges for their hardware. I also rather like the larger pool of software, hardware and (dare I say it?) games available for the PC. If it were my living at home, I'd probably invest in a Mac.

[jaypie77]

Nobody else has experience with this?