New Mac Pro

ambivalent · Jan 8, 2008

man... I miss my G5. Mac pros are so amazing now... My iMac doesnt handle what I do, and I don't even use it for professional anything! But try playing world of warcraft, using photoshop, adium and safari... Sigh

I want a new machine. Hard to choose between the large iMac and max out the ram or get a mac pro... Wish I had the cash to get a 30" display. I wish I was going to macworld too! Anyway... Exciting.

bubba · Jan 8, 2008

Must....refrain....from...keeping....up....with....technology!

lisamel · Jan 9, 2008

bryphotoguy said:
I assume it uses the Penryn processors. Hopefully the 65nm processors drop in price so I can swap mine out for 2 Quad cores.
Seems Apple made room for the double wide cards. It now supports 8- 30" monitors!

you can do that? wow! I didn't even think of that. (I'm a dumb newbie)
Probably cost difference wouldn't be much between selling machine and getting new one.

Amigalander · Jan 9, 2008

I have a new iMac at work, and I'm considering getting a Mac Pro for home to replace my PC. I prefer to do all my work on the Mac side, and play some games on the PC (boot camp) side. I think the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT would be fine for the Mac side, but I would want something beefier for PC games.

Is it possible to install any PCIe card I want for use in boot camp while leaving the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT for use on the Mac?

Thanks.

CoG888 · Jan 9, 2008

Just get the GeForce 8800GT. Anandtech.com says its about the best card for the money right now. Its only a $200 upgrade, and you would pay more then that if you bought it separately!
I am going to buy a 2.8 Quad w/ the 8800 after MW... just in case they announce something else between the iMac and the Mac Pro. I doubt they will, but its only a week to wait.

Alexis · Jan 9, 2008

Wonder why it says the Radeon 2600XT gives 88FPS in Doom 3? I get 100FPS in WindowsXP with the same settings on my iMac.

the8thark · Jan 9, 2008

Maybe the same is made for the PC and the Mac version is only a port of the PC version, not fully optimised for OS X. That would explain the slight drop in FPS.

vaughan80 · Jan 9, 2008

ambivalent said:
man... I miss my G5. Mac pros are so amazing now... My iMac doesnt handle what I do, and I don't even use it for professional anything! But try playing world of warcraft, using photoshop, adium and safari... Sigh

What planet are you on (or more to the point, what spec is your imac?) Mine runs photoshop, final cut pro, adium, firefox and after effects all at the same time (even with afx rendering something) without a blip!

Not quite macpro standards, but more impressive than anything else i have seen

cowasaki · Jan 9, 2008

bryphotoguy said:
If you gotta buy the RAID card anyways for the SAS drives, couldn't you just do RAID 0+1 so you wouldn't have to use a Time Machine HD? Or is 0+1 slower?

Time machine has advantages over RAID, if I create a file then change it, change it the next day then delete it time machine will recall each version. RAID wont, you might have the last version in the waste bin but thats about it!

lisamel · Jan 9, 2008

bryphotoguy said:
Buy an eSATA card and give that a whirl if FW800 isn't a fast enough option for an external.
No clue why Apple says SAS and SATA can be installed, I would assume the two hidden SATA ports might be no good either for 1TB HD's if you're running SAS drives. If it is possible, there should be a simple enough way to use the bottom half of the optical drive sled to mount a 5th HD.

Don't even need an esata card, just the cable from newertech. It just attaches to the unused ports, (although they are hard to get to) and comes out the back.

http://www.newertech.com/products/esata_cable.php

TheInvsbleMan · Jan 9, 2008

well now google can move their servers to one computer

haha

dj_hype · Jan 9, 2008

has anyone tried customizing these things yet? i tried to opt for the 880GT but it said 3-5weeks estimated ship time.

i'll stick with the 2600XT. I'm glad I waited to order. Now all i need is for wells fargo to get off their butt and make funds available!

Quick question tho, can I still run 667mhz FB-DIMMS in this thing? I'd assume so since it should be backwards compatible but what about mixing speeds?

PowerBookG4 · Jan 9, 2008

yeah for some reason that card makes the time it takes to receive the computer extremely long, but in my case i'm ordering it any way, because its worth it.

with out the card it ships in 3-5 days. I don't know why the delay for one card.

HAMA101 · Jan 9, 2008

Mixed Drives w/RAID card

I understand it's all SATA or all SAS, but how about with the RAID card option? Is it possible to to throw in a single SAS (as a scratch drive) along with three 1GB SATAs using the RAID card option?

PowerBookG4 · Jan 9, 2008

Well I think it works like this:

All the hard drives either have to attached to the logic board, or to the card. You can't have one to the card and the rest to the board, or visa versa. I think once a SAS drive is plugged in the card will only work with SAS because of some kind of hardware limit to how the information flows through the card, or how the chips can process the information.

The question really is, if you place a second raid card in your system can you use 2 different kinds of hard drives.

dj_hype · Jan 9, 2008

what are you doing to require the 8800gt? I may be working with motion/after effects every now and then but it won't be super intense stuff and it will mostly be photoshop, final cut, and a few other apps.

ambivalent · Jan 9, 2008

vaughan80 said:
What planet are you on (or more to the point, what spec is your imac?) Mine runs photoshop, final cut pro, adium, firefox and after effects all at the same time (even with afx rendering something) without a blip!

Not quite macpro standards, but more impressive than anything else i have seen

hah!!! Yea you have 3 gigs of ram! I have a 20" intel with 1g of ram. There is def. Something wrong with my computer though, I'm compiling screenshots...

lisamel · Jan 9, 2008

shipping time with the nvidia is 3-5 weeks- ouch!

Is it better performance wise if you have dual displays to have 2 cards or one card, or doesn't it matter?

I was thinking get the ati and just add another one. They are on ebay for $50.

smeshy123 · Jan 10, 2008

ambivalent said:
hah!!! Yea you have 3 gigs of ram! I have a 20" intel with 1g of ram. There is def. Something wrong with my computer though, I'm compiling screenshots...

I will bet that your biggest laggard is your ram, upgrade it and you will probably be much happier!

PowerBookG4 · Jan 10, 2008

dj_hype said:
what are you doing to require the 8800gt? I may be working with motion/after effects every now and then but it won't be super intense stuff and it will mostly be photoshop, final cut, and a few other apps.

Editing High Deff Video.