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MacPro soon, in need of Video Card, Screen and Mouse/Keyboard advice

C

Coolpowers

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Greetings All,

I'm a transportation design student in Paris. I'm gonna change my computer soon for a Mac Pro since my Hp Pavillion is dieing soon...😱 and I dont want any other laptop, even macbook/pro/air, since i allways have problems with the increase of temperature..(I had an Imac which had a burned mainboard problem..:-/) so I dont want a compact computer like laptops or Imac.

Mac Pro will be my only computer, and in my room no place for a television..etc, so it will be the computer i use for work and also for watching DVD..etc which means it's gonna stay on without beeing shut down sometimes for 2-3 days (i love sleeping while watching tv..lol) And also the reason i want a Mac Pro is that while using Potoshop, Illustrator, Indesign..etc at the same time i'm using firefox (with a lot of tabs opened) , itunes, msn, yahoo messenger, and secondlife(sometimes)..so i need a lot of ram, which is a big reason also why i choose MacPro and i dont change my computer every two years (I use for 4-5 years) so the extansion options of Mac Pro is a big plus for me as well....and i'm using Imac in school.. and i hate that screen, so no question of buying an IMac..and wanted to wait for the next Mac Pro update but i dont think that i will be able to wait until january so i decided to move on a Mac Pro in the end of september.

Here's the configuration that i choose:

Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon (oor may be 3,0 GHZ )
2Gb (2x1Gb) ( and i will upgrade it with 8GB ram that i will buy in MacWay)
a 500 GB HD and a 1TB HD
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB [+ 119,99 €] or Ati 3870 (?)
Two 16x SuperDrives [+ 90,00 €]
Apple Cinema HD Display (30 inch) [+ 1.799,00 €] (?)

So now here are my questions:


Eizo FlexScan SX2761W 27" or Apple Cinema Display 30" ?

Honestly, 3" of difference is not a big difference for me, i mean even a 27" is huge for me, and the price of those screens are nearly the same, does this Eizo FlexScan has a better quality than Apple Cinema Display? or to have a better quality i should buy Eizo ColourEdge series? Also the 5 year guarantee of the Eizo is a big plus for me, can you give me your thoughts and experiences about these screen please? Which one you would suggest me? 😱


My second question is about the video cards:

In many forums i read that the 8800 GT cards has many problems, failures, but on the other hand there are many people who didnt have problem with those cards. Now when i buy a new Mac Pro with a 8800 GT card, can it still be a defected card? or it would be the same until there is an update for the driver? And all this story makes me think of buying Ati 3870, afterall i'm not a big gamer, and i have my xbox360 for my car racing games..lol, but i have two problems/questions with this Ati Card:


- will these Ati Card available in apple store so that i can command my MacPro with the Ati card which will save me from installing it, and may be breaking it while putting it on my mac pro 🙁 , or i will allways have to buy it from Ati..etc?

- my second question is about the game Secondlife. It is the only game i enjoy to play on computer. I wanted to ask for the experience of the users if they tried secondlife with this Ati Card. Because i guess that Ati cards causes problems with this game and the game crashes a lot. (I had an Ati 9600 XT which caused it to crash every 2 minutes and when it was burned i changed it with Geforce MX 4000 which is a less performant card but it doesnt crash anymore) That's why i wanted to ask it.


And Also i'm thinking about a mouse and a keyboard:

- Logitech diNovo Edge Mac Edition (keyboard)

- Logitech MX revolution (mouse)

They tell that this mouse is pretty good but i didnt find a lot to read about the experiences of this keyboard on Mac computers, so Your experiences will be appreciated. 🙂

Thank you very much in advance for all your kind replies and helps! 🙂

Coolpowers
 
No Apple Display!

I can answer your first question quite confidently as I've done quite a bit of research on the topic of displays (I'm a motion graphics student myself).

You really don't want to go with any of the Apple Cinema displays as they use dated H-IPS panels from LG which have pretty poor contrast ratios. Also the color gamut (or color range) on them are nothing special considering the price.

Sure the Eizos don't look as slick design-wise but they definitely have some good stuff (S-PVA panels from Samsung) and the ColorEdge models have rather huge color gamut although they are expensive.

Personally I'm going to be getting the NEC LCD2690WUXi as it is reviewed to have one of the largest color gamuts for their price (US$1200) and have a feature which creates incredibly even lighting with something like avg. %1 deviation in backlighting.

As far as the 3870 ATi card is concerned, I have no experience with this card as I have yet to get my Mac Pro. What I can say from reading around, it seems to me it will never be an option to have a Mac Pro built with one on Apple's site as they probably would've already added it by now (that or they're waiting until the next model). So you'd probably end up having to install it yourself, which isn't really that hard you just have to make sure you touch something metal to get rid of any static charge in yourself.

You'll probably be fine with the 8800GT if you don't plan on using too much video/photo editing Apple software which works better with ATi.
 
Munix88, thank you very much for your answer.

After than i read your messages, i looked at the prices of the Nec monitors and found two monitors which pleased me: SpectraView® 2690 and MultiSync® LCD3090WQXi , so now i added those two models as well to my confusion list..lol

which one of those would have the best quality? Nec or Eizo montiors that i chose?

And thank you very much for your answer about the video cards, now i'm still in confusion but i guess i found a solution, after all since the card will be aftermarket i have to command something anyway, so factory option will commang 8800 GT and will command ant Ati3870 from Ati as well so will have both..

I have a wish from the moderators, if it's possible i would like them to move this thread to Mac Pro board, may be i will get more answers there, Thank you! 😉
 
For the most part, I think most members would advise to buy HDD's, Memory, graphics cards, etc. after market, and install them yourself in a base model Mac Pro. You'd save a substantial bit of cash that way. I doubt you'd have a noticeable speed increase by bumping the CPU's to 3.0 GHz, especially considering the cost.

As for the ATI Radeon HD 3870, you could order that directly from ATI's site, or from an e-tailer. For the moment, direct from ATI may get one in your hands faster.

As for monitors, a number of threads already exist, covering most, if not all the models you're interested in. It would take some time to wade through it all, but may be worth it. 🙂

Other threads also cover the mouse you're looking at. As for the keyboard, IDK. Sorry. 😱
 
Logitech MX revolution (mouse)
Click to expand...

i can only comment on this, but the logitech forums are swarmed with people complaining about the scroll wheel sticking (mine did-but repairable) and it not holding its charge at all after a while..i wish it was perfect 🙁 but i went with the vx.

After my second vx became faulty i thought id just stick to a good old wired mouse.
 
I've got the Logitech MX Revolution and it is excellent. I have it coupled with the Apple Wireless Keyboard and this is in my opinion the best set you could possibly get.
 
PRAD reviews

Coolpowers, in my researching monitors I found a great review site that looks at many monitors from different companies especially Eizo and NEC but not so much the really high end stuff like the ColorEdge Eizos.

Try http://www.prad.de/en/monitore/reviews.html . It is actually a German site with most all of the reviews translated to English. Just select to sort by manufacturer and click 'select' or whatever it says for you and look for any monitors you might be thinking about.

As for the differences in Eizo and NEC, it is probably just personal preference. The Eizos use PVA panels which tend to have better contrast ratios and deep blacks compared to IPS panels which NEC uses. I picked the NEC because of the wide range of color it displays and the even lighting feature since I will probably be doing printed graphic stuff in the future. Plus I've read IPS panels tend to have very good viewing angles but reviews in this area seem to be about the same for Eizo and NEC.
 
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