Here's a little bit of my history. I have a dell laptop which is great for my everyday needs (school, web browsing and music) but I need a computer that I can edit video on efficiently. I've tried with my laptop but it's slow and I can't preview my movies unless I set them on crap and I can't tell how smooth the final product is going to be unless I transfer the movie to my harddrive and play it through media player. By the way I use Sony Vegas 8 to edit my movies. I'm going to get an HD camcorder soon (sony SR11) and I want to be able to edit the HD content without skipping a beat. I have a 40" samsung HDTV that's 1080p and I intend on using that as my monitor so I don't need to purchase a monitor. I was thinking about getting a dell xps 720 or 630 but I've heard so much about apples OS and I actually tried it recently and it looks nice. Plus I've heard that apples are the superior video editing computers so I'm not sure what to do...Should I save a little longer and get the mac pro 2008 (and I would get the quard core rather than the 8 core) or should I go with something else for my needs. Oh one more thing the only games that I play are games that virtually need no video card like (sims 2, sims 3 in the future, CSI and some board games) not much of a gamer but I want to have the option. The fact that you can load Vista on a Mac is very appealing but I feel it might be a bit much to get the mac pro, apeture, final cut, and different keyboard, a wireless mouse, VM software and Vista. I'm not sure if I should go through all of that trouble to switch my OS but I really want to own a mac....I just need some guidance. Thank you guys for your help.
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Mac Pro 2008 too much for my needs...
- Thread starter vesonexavier
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Except he's already got a monitor.
Welcome to the world of Apple: If you already have a monitor, you have two choices. The ultra high end Mac Pro or the ultra low end Mac Mini.
If I were you, I'd look for a deal on one of the 2007 Mac Pros. They are quad core and you should be able to find them for under 2000 at this point.
Thats not a great suggestion considering his situation. He could get a Mac Pro for that price and it would have twice the processing power...
I suggest that you sign up for the student ADC membership ($99) and then use your once-in-a-lifetime 25% hardware discount to buy a Mac Pro (2.8ghz 8-core if you can afford it). Even if you don't feel like you need the 8-core right now, the 25% discount should make pretty attractive (exactly $2239, $2339 with price of membership) and will extend the longevity of the machine. When you're working with true HD video, you can never have too much CPU power for exporting/encoding...
Why not get a refurbished Quad 2.66GHz Mac Pro? That would seem to suit all your needs and you'd save some money, to boot. If you are going to use it for a lot of video editing, I'd say go for the Mac Pro over the iMac.
Apple Refurb Store
an 8-core mac pro is NOT overkill for editing HD.
a farm of 10 of them wouldn't be overkill.
I have yet to see a machine that eats 1080p for breakfast.
A Mac Pro is certainly good enough, though, right now.
I would say an imac or a mbp is insufficient for anything beyond DV. Others may (will, i am sure) disagree, but then people also claim Crysis runs "smooth as glass" on a mbp, so people's perceptions are different.
get a used 4-core mac pro or do what crazy eddie suggests.
Also, Sims 2 - and soon to be 3 require pretty considerable graphics card power by Mac standards. There is only 1 card available for 1 mac right now (the 8800gt) that can run Sims 2 at 1080p with everything turned up and not studder when a cinematic even happens. Coming from PC world, your graphics expectations are probably higher than they should be. Apple is notoriously bad with graphics updates, which is ironic considering their focus on visuals.
3 months ago you could spend over $10,000 dollars on a mac pro and still end up with a 7300 graphics card...In fact, I'm typing on a less-than-one-year-old 4-core Mac Pro that with options was over 5500 dollars and it is running a single 7300. Luckily I do zero gaming on this machine.
Just giving you fair warning.
a farm of 10 of them wouldn't be overkill.
I have yet to see a machine that eats 1080p for breakfast.
A Mac Pro is certainly good enough, though, right now.
I would say an imac or a mbp is insufficient for anything beyond DV. Others may (will, i am sure) disagree, but then people also claim Crysis runs "smooth as glass" on a mbp, so people's perceptions are different.
get a used 4-core mac pro or do what crazy eddie suggests.
Also, Sims 2 - and soon to be 3 require pretty considerable graphics card power by Mac standards. There is only 1 card available for 1 mac right now (the 8800gt) that can run Sims 2 at 1080p with everything turned up and not studder when a cinematic even happens. Coming from PC world, your graphics expectations are probably higher than they should be. Apple is notoriously bad with graphics updates, which is ironic considering their focus on visuals.
3 months ago you could spend over $10,000 dollars on a mac pro and still end up with a 7300 graphics card...In fact, I'm typing on a less-than-one-year-old 4-core Mac Pro that with options was over 5500 dollars and it is running a single 7300. Luckily I do zero gaming on this machine.
Just giving you fair warning.
Thanks for your comments guys. I do have two other questions though can you use a student discount with ADC membership? And do you think the stock video card (256 mb) is good enough for hd editing. Through what I've read the video card isn't the most important component when it comes to editing the processor is...is that true?
No, they are separate discounts. Thats why its called a Student ADC Membership
You'll save about $250 by using the student ADC discount over the normal student discount, even after you take the $99 fee into consideration. Not a bad deal if you ask me...
Yeah get a refurb 2006 2.66 quad core Mac Pro. Bump the RAM up to 4 gigs, and your set. Actually if you take the new Mac Pro and drop it down to the 4 core it seems to be the same price
Actually I have a better idea, get a refurb 24" imac (core 2 extreme), then hook up your other monitor, then you'll have dual display.
Actually I have a better idea, get a refurb 24" imac (core 2 extreme), then hook up your other monitor, then you'll have dual display.
Yeah get a refurb 2006 2.66 quad core Mac Pro. Bump the RAM up to 4 gigs, and your set. Actually if you take the new Mac Pro and drop it down to the 4 core it seems to be the same price
Actually I have a better idea, get a refurb 24" imac (core 2 extreme), then hook up your other monitor, then you'll have dual display.
I still think he would be much better off with the 8 core Mac Pro for about $300 more than the refurb. Twice the cores, each one is faster, newer, runs cooler and it will come with a faster graphics card.
And to answer the previous question, the stock graphics card is fine. It actually runs the pro apps better than the upgraded graphics cards (for reasons unknown). The only advantage of the upgraded graphics card is gaming, but since you're not a big gamer its not a worthwhile upgrade.
The mac pro is definitely what you want. Before I had it I attempted to process 1080P uncompressed footage on my macbook pro (2.33Ghz, 2GB ram). It was ok for cutting and splicing (external firewire 800 HD), but not fun when it came to rendering or compressing footage it would take several hours.
The mac pro takes more like 20 minutes in comparison (depending on the complexity of the comp of course).
Most of the time I use it as a windows machine by the way, running Vista 64, so you don't have to worry about upgrading your software if it was already compatible.
Also in my experience the graphics card hasn't made much of a difference when it comes to video rendering speed. The processor is definitely the key here.
The mac pro takes more like 20 minutes in comparison (depending on the complexity of the comp of course).
Most of the time I use it as a windows machine by the way, running Vista 64, so you don't have to worry about upgrading your software if it was already compatible.
Also in my experience the graphics card hasn't made much of a difference when it comes to video rendering speed. The processor is definitely the key here.