2 x 2.8 MP For £1349.13! Sound Purchase or buy 'Nehalem' alternative after WWDC?

[Tesselator]

I don't need massive capacity, so the smaller drives in greater quantities gives the speed neccesary for the lowest overall cost. Single platter drives also seem to produce fewer headaches, as there's fewer to fail.

Yup! If I were still editing Video full-time for a living it's what I'd do as well!

BTW, what are you doing? Trying to weed down the hardcopy storage to get some space back?

No, I just download lots and lots of eBooks and subscribe to lots and lots of e-magazines. Favorite topics are 3D/2D art creation, music production, photography, design, programming manuals, science & tech (FA, OA, HA), history, politics, and cosmology.

Never enough closet or other storage space. Maybe I should stop being a packrat. NAH.

LOL...

I search and cross reference stuff too often to delete anything.

Part Description (from crucial)

CT774458 4GB kit (2GBx2), Apple 240-pin FBDIMM Mac Pro (8-core Xeon 5400 Series) 2nd Gen. Early 2008 DDR2 upgrades £ 67.99 x 3
Subtotal £ 203.97
Ship-to Country: VAT Tax calculated at 15% for United Kingdom £ 30.00

Shipping £ 0.00 Estimated Total £ 234.57

Is this a good price for this memory?

Any better/cheaper elsewhere?

I think it is, yes! I haven looked in the past 3 months or so but at that time it certainly would have been!

 

[nanofrog]

No, I just download lots and lots of eBooks and subscribe to lots and lots of e-magazines. Favorite topics are 3D/2D art creation, music production, photography, design, programming manuals, science & tech (FA, OA, HA), history, politics, and cosmology.

I search and cross reference stuff too often to delete anything.

"Too many hobbies, too little time", I've heard of. But Too many hobbies, too little disk space is still rather strange.

Oh... wait...my collection of data sheets. I've gotten rid of a lot of the old catalogs. Finally. I had to make room for the computer afterall...

I think it is, yes! I haven looked in the past 3 months or so but at that time it certainly would have been!

How does Crucial or Kingston price out in the UK these days?

I seem to recall it was decent, say for the FB-DIMM on the '06 - '08 models, but I've no idea now.

 

[icecavern]

Part Description (from crucial)

CT774458 4GB kit (2GBx2), Apple 240-pin FBDIMM Mac Pro (8-core Xeon 5400 Series) 2nd Gen. Early 2008 DDR2 upgrades £ 67.99 x 3
Subtotal £ 203.97
Ship-to Country: VAT Tax calculated at 15% for United Kingdom £ 30.00

Shipping £ 0.00 Estimated Total £ 234.57

Is this a good price for this memory?

Any better/cheaper elsewhere?

That's the exact memory I bought. You might buy cheaper elsewhere but I wouldn't go for cheap memory. Crucial have never let me down quality wise so I always buy there.

IMHO you can worry too much about saving a couple of pounds, or that your drive is 1ms slower to access... It makes no real world difference.

I put a WD Cavier Black 1TB in my MP along with 8GB of the memory you are looking at. For me that works perfect and everything flies.

 

[xiovoix]

Thanks for the "input" everyone! So for this machine has cost me £1319.19 = 2 x 2.8 08MP, Crucial ram = £234, 2 x VR 150gb = £278, 1 x WD Caviar Black 1tb = £85. Total so far £1916 and I need a wifi card still at £40 so £1956 in all. After specing a 2.26 nehalem octo from Apple with edu discount @ £2066. I'm hoping I'm on the right boat and the 2.8 08 will blow it outta the water
I will post some pics of my final setup when I get everything sorted. Until then amigos I will probably still have plenty of questions. Again many thanks!

 

[xiovoix]

That's the exact memory I bought. You might buy cheaper elsewhere but I wouldn't go for cheap memory. Crucial have never let me down quality wise so I always buy there.

IMHO you can worry too much about saving a couple of pounds, or that your drive is 1ms slower to access... It makes no real world difference.

I put a WD Cavier Black 1TB in my MP along with 8GB of the memory you are looking at. For me that works perfect and everything flies.

Sounds like we have plumped very similar setups? What you use yours for?

 

[icecavern]

Sounds like we have plumped very similar setups? What you use yours for?

I'm a photographer so I use it for photo editing.

 

[Tesselator]

I'm hoping I'm on the right boat and the 2.8 08 will blow it outta the water

It's noticeably faster at almost everything but not water-blowing. It's only 100MHz to 600MHz faster (per core after turbo) which is good and great when you consider it's still cheaper after everything. Blown out of the water to me would be 2 GHz per core faster or more. By that definition you can feel secure in that even a fully stuffed 09 2.92 GHz (at $8K) does NOT blow your 08 2.8GHz machine out of the water!

 

[xiovoix]

I'm a photographer so I use it for photo editing.

Nice one! Just bought eos 40d too

 

[xiovoix]

It's noticeably faster at almost everything but not water-blowing. It's only 100MHz to 600MHz faster (per core after turbo) which is good and great when you consider it's still cheaper after everything. Blown out of the water to me would be 2 GHz per core faster or more. By that definition you can feel secure in that even a fully stuffed 09 2.92 GHz (at $8K) does NOT blow your 08 2.8GHz machine out of the water!

After turbo? Que?

Yeah I concur! But was just a bit concerned with benchmarks published in the july issue of Macworld and their review of the 2.93 nehalem! Interesting reading. In all but gaming the 2.8 kept up. But dont care much for gaming on computers What happens if a submarine comes along though?

 

[snouter]

After turbo? Que?

Nehalems can kind of overclock themselves.

2.26 -> 2.4
2.66 -> 3.06
2.93 -> 3.33

 

[Tesselator]

After turbo? Que?

The new procs have a turbo mode so the amount of clocks can vary. If everything else is relatively quiet in your system and one app is starting to approach 100% of one core then the other cores can reduce power while the near 100% one can get a voltage increase. It's like dynamic overclocking or something.


EDIT: Ah, thanks snouter! (Yeah, like that.)

 

[xiovoix]

Oh aye! That old legit overclocking trick! Im gonna overclock my 2.8 to 3.4

 

[Merzie]

You might run into trouble with that, for the overclock can apparently shorten the life of the cpus. Just something I read.. --true? idk.

 

[nanofrog]

Oh aye! That old legit overclocking trick! I'm gonna overclock my 2.8 to 3.4

You could try the Over Clocking tool (software) from ZDnet's German site.

It's been in a few threads, so hopefully, a search would turn up a link quickly.

You might run into trouble with that, for the overclock can apparently shorten the life of the cpus. Just something I read.. --true? idk.

If it runs too hot, or with too much voltage, you can. But use proper cooling (usually a 3rd party cooling solution that's considerably better than stock), and some sense with the voltage settings, it's not an issue.

 

[Tesselator]

Yeah, these days with the cooling options available, it's not an issue at all. Especially if you consider that people who likely to overclock are the same types whom would be likely to upgrade their systems every few years to whatever the latest and greatest is.

 

[xiovoix]

Yeah, these days with the cooling options available, it's not an issue at all. Especially if you consider that people who likely to overclock are the same types whom would be likely to upgrade their systems every few years to whatever the latest and greatest is.

I'm not that type o'girl! I just like pushing things to the limit and getting the best outta what I got. I won't be changing anything for 3-4 years now come what may.
Anyhoo have had a change of heart about the VRs and I forgot this 2600xt is a bit sh*te!

New plan? GeForce GTX 275 55nm SLI 896MB DDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI PCI-Express - Retail *** with FREE Far Cry 2 *** £178 ( Far Cry 2 anyone?).
2 x Samsung 64GB 2.5" SATA-II MLC Solid State Hard Drive = £184 + Scythe Twin Mounter 2.5, 2.5 to 3.5inch Adapter @ 7.99. Would I be able to use 4 SSDs in the 2 drive bays this way with twin mounter?

New total £2266.50