2008 MacPro: Positive Experiences

zdobson · Feb 14, 2008

I'm tired of people just posting bad things about the new Mac Pro. How about a thread where you post an experience with your new MP that blew your mind and let you know it was money well spent. Here's mine:

On my PowerBook G4, it took me 1 - 1.5 hours to render and burn a DVD slide show. I didn't time it exactly because I had to go do other things while it was burning. New MP, start to finish, 10 min. Nice. Not only is it fast, I can actually do other work while it's rendering/burning.

Another: Retouch Artists Photoshop speed test: PBG4: 10min 53sec MP: 25sec

What are your positive experiences?

ksz · Feb 14, 2008

My only other Mac is also a PowerBook G4. My new Mac Pro was delivered on the 13th...to my neighbor's house as I'm out of town.

The PB G4 annoys me to no end because it has piss-poor cooling and raises the gray screen of death five minutes after fans turn on.

Spotlight indexing with Leopard never finished because the computer would never stay on long enough, so I removed 90% of the directories from the search. Mail App never finished downloading the Inbox from my Gmail and AOL Mail accounts for similar reasons.

Burning a DVD? I wouldn't even think of it.

So I am truly looking forward to using the new Mac Pro and installing all the software that have just been waiting in their celophane-wrapped boxes for the past few weeks. It would be a promotion from pauper to prince in one fell swoop.

bensim · Feb 14, 2008

I just can't get over how fast my new Mac Pro starts up. I haven't done any real tests yet. It's worked perfectly since I opened the box yesterday.

ptseng · Feb 14, 2008

Okay here is a positive experience under visualhub.

PowerMac G5 1 file = 13 hours
MacPro 4 files = 2 hours.

No kidding.

Mr.PS · Feb 14, 2008

I love mine. I had to replace my other one because of video issues. This one is rock solid so far. The 8800GT and 8 cores are great. I added two 750gb Samsung Spinpoints and 4gb of OWC ram today. She screams now!

The Mac Pro is an amazing machine!

eyecool · Feb 14, 2008

Mr.PS said:
I love mine. I had to replace my other one because of video issues. This one is rock solid so far. The 8800GT and 8 cores are great. I added two 750gb Samsung Spinpoints and 4gb of OWC ram today. She screams now!

The Mac Pro is an amazing machine!

Glad it's going well!!

Mr.PS · Feb 14, 2008

eyecool said:
Glad it's going well!!

Thanks, did yours ship yet? Looks like Apple let it rip with the 8800GT now and they're all shipping. The website says 2-3 days now. I'm so glad they didn't make us wait until the end of Feb to ship! My original ship date was Feb 29th with delivery by March 4th.

odo · Feb 15, 2008

Haven't had time to work on it yet. In the middle of a project I'm not switching from workstation.

But: when I started my MP 3.2 8800 I was VERY pleasantly surprised by the silence! What a difference to my quadcore G5!
And it screams with power. Can't wait to switch all my work to this monster/beauty!

viltsu · Feb 15, 2008

I just love my Mac Pro. There´s nothing more to say!

Heliconsoul · Feb 15, 2008

As a switcher I'm just amazed with the raw power of the thing and how easy it is to use, it's like night and day. I'm also very impressed with how quiet it is, I was using a custom build PC previously and the noise difference is huge.

Michael73 · Feb 15, 2008

Sure you're tasks are faster, but...

just wait till you can do about 4-5 effortlessly all at the same time!

I've found that the greatest benefit of the MP under Leopard is using Spaces and having lots of apps crunching away, encoding, processing, ripping, burning, listening, dowloading and writing an email all at the same time with no lag.

In fact, in many cases you'll be more challenged to keep up with the machine than the machine keeping up with you!

ComeOnDieYoung · Feb 15, 2008

Yes

I just got my Mac Pro w/8800

Its so quiet I can't tell its on.

After Effects renders 8 frames simultaneously!

I pitted it against my MacBook Pro in the render of a complicated scene:

MacBook Pro 2.16 2gb ram: 1hr 9 minutes
3.0 16gb ram: 8 minutes

8 minutes... i got what I paid for.

Also installed BootCamp win xp pro downloading some games and using Endorphin LE (which is alot of fun even if you aren't a 3D professional)

The only problem I had was getting my wireless keyboard to work in WINXP, works now though.

Sorry if some of you got one of the bad seeds, hopefully :apple:

will right that for you.

casw1000 · Feb 15, 2008

Just to add my own experiences. I have the MP dual quad 2.8, 2gb ram, 8800gt, 320gb hard disk.

This is my first serious Mac, I say serious as I bought the Mac Mini the day it came out, as a benchmark to see if I would like OSX before splashing the cash on the Pro Mac.

So here we are today. After lugging the box aroun 29.55 Kg of it, I open the box to find the usual very high quality packing. I got the machine powered up and with the Lan cable plugged in, answered about 5 questions and job done. I was on the net and already using the MP. What a pleasure.

The machine is very quick and responsive. I am used to heavily overclocked quad machines, so this had to be quick to impress me. Yes I am very happy.

I will be rebuilding the machine this weekend as follows. The existing 320gb will become a dedicated Vista drive for games / bootcamp. Install 1x 750 Samsung F1 for OSX. Install 2x 74gb 10K Raptors in a stripped raid which will be used for video editing etc.

I also use this machine for folding@home project. I am impressed with this as well. Just a few things to be aware of if you do "fold".

The fans run quite low, so I installed SMC Fan control v2 which is compatible with Leopard. This allows you to define each of the fans inside and works well.

I installed iStatsMenu, as this gives a good level of info about your new MP. I am that happy with this machine, that I am already planning to start saving for the next one. Yes its pricey, but this is a top quality, high end workstation.

Just my 2p worth.

-casw1000
fold4life.com

dukeblue91 · Feb 15, 2008

I got my MP on the 13th and transfered everything that night.
I'm amazed at how fast this thing is and how cool the inside is set up.
So yes I'm totally in love with my MP.

BryanLyle · Feb 15, 2008

Loving my Mac Pro. I ran a movie through Handbrake on my 2.4 MBP and it took a little over 2 hours to finish. It took 20 minutes on my MP.

Zoom Zoom.

kannonbal · Feb 15, 2008

As if I wasn't already excited.

This computer is going to change my life!

It should be here this afternoon.

Whaa Hoo!

vendettabass · Feb 15, 2008

BryanLyle said:
Loving my Mac Pro. I ran a movie through Handbrake on my 2.4 MBP and it took a little over 2 hours to finish. It took 20 minutes on my MP.

Zoom Zoom.

insane

desenso · Feb 15, 2008

My new Mac Pro is awesome. It has no flaws. It's ridiculously fast. I love it long time.

Leafminer · Feb 15, 2008

I am also a switcher. Mine just arrived yesterday, so I have had little time to barely kick the tires, but it was worth sacrificing some sleep last night just to get it setup. Did the Leopard upgrade, so far so good. Still learning just how to find my way around really. Was impressed that I immediately saw my PC in Finder on my home network without me lifting a finger. I was able to browse the shared drives with ease. Love the 'boot up time' and instant on from sleep. It slept overnight and no wake issues this morning - fingers crossed.

Not too fond of the mouse though, even with right click enabled. It will take some gettin' used to, or I will just use my Logitech.

urchinboy · Feb 15, 2008

Still waiting for mine to turn up. Have ordered through a friendly reseller in the UK, which is all very well and good but means I don't have any ability to check shipping dates etc every five minutes. I think they're slowly getting annoyed with me asking how it's going every day.

Good to read all the positive experiences though. For me this upgrade is all about saving rendering time and so all these stories about 'it used to take a month and now it's finished rendering before I've released the mouse button' are at least making me realise it's going to be worth the money and be a MASSIVE step up from my MBP setup at the mo.

Although it's clearly now going to arrive when I'm on holiday next week.

Booooo to the 8800gt.

BryanLyle · Feb 15, 2008

Leafminer said:
Not too fond of the mouse though, even with right click enabled. It will take some gettin' used to, or I will just use my Logitech.

Welcome to OS X.

I am not a fan of the mouse either. I used a mighty mouse for a while on my iMac, but switched over to a Logitech MX. It works great and feels more "natural" in my hand.

imacdaddy · Feb 15, 2008

All you folks are making me jealous! I'm still waiting for mine to arrive (Hong Kong) so I'm stuck on my iMac G5. I'm tired of the spinning beach ball and bouncing icons on the Dock...not that the iMac is bad as it's still good. Your HandBreak and VisualHub results are making my jaws drop!

I've got 10GB of RAM and 3 x 720GB F1's just sitting here staring back at me. My display better come in next week before the MP or else!!!

podvisual · Feb 15, 2008

Another Positive

I love this thing!!

Traded my Mac Pro 2.0 quad for this and couldn't be happier. I had only installed my old machine up to 10.4.10 so the software aspect of this upgrade was just as significant as the hardware. Overall in the programs I use (lightroom & CS3 mostly for "work", handbrake for fun) I'm seeing roughly a 33% speed increase on average across those programs. That (theoretically) could turn a 10 hour day at the computer following a wedding into a 6.5 hour day... I'll take that!!

Some of the above programs utilize multiple cores much better then others, and all have room to improve. I've yet to have one program really use more then 5 cores (steadily) and none have peaked at over 6.

Right now I only have 4 gb of ram and plan on upgrading to 8 as soon as my trade in is processed and that part of the purchase gets refunded to my CC. Maybe having all 8 lanes filled will allow the cores to get saturated a bit more...

I feel this machine could actually get faster the older it is as future software releases are better capable to distribute the load over all 8 cores.

MrPDaddyHimself · Feb 15, 2008

Michael73 said:
just wait till you can do about 4-5 effortlessly all at the same time!

I've found that the greatest benefit of the MP under Leopard is using Spaces and having lots of apps crunching away, encoding, processing, ripping, burning, listening, dowloading and writing an email all at the same time with no lag.

In fact, in many cases you'll be more challenged to keep up with the machine than the machine keeping up with you!

Your quote was exactly what I wanted to hear. I've been chugging along on a MacBookPro for over a year. It's killing my productivity. I was hoping to hear someone post comments like yours. Mine arrives today. I'm pumped. Any migration issues or did you load fresh?

edesignuk · Feb 15, 2008

I had it reboot from waking once, but I reset PRAM and all has been fine since.

Other that that, I'm over the moon with it. Very fast machine with plenty of room for growth

2008 MacPro: Positive Experiences

macrumors 6502

macrumors 68000

macrumors newbie

macrumors member

macrumors 6502a

macrumors regular

macrumors 6502a

macrumors member

macrumors member

macrumors member

macrumors 65816

macrumors member

macrumors member

macrumors 65816

macrumors 6502a

macrumors member

macrumors 6502a

macrumors 6502a

macrumors newbie

macrumors member

macrumors 6502a

macrumors 6502a

macrumors newbie

macrumors regular

Moderator emeritus

Our Staff