Like everyone else here I was highly disappointed with the Mac pro "update". I've been using a G5 in my home studio & was trying to wait for a new pro because I didn't want to pay top dollar for a 2 year old machine. Since the update was a disappointment I've decided to buy a used machine from eBay. Im having a hard time deciding on either the 2008 2.8ghz 8core & a 2009 2.66ghz 4core. Any help would be greatly appreciated they are very close in price I just want the best performer for my $$. I'm running protools 9 & will soon be upgrading to 10, with many plug ins & soft synths. Im looking for the smoothest run for producing with my new machine.
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8 core 2008 or 4 2009
- Thread starter MikeD3tro1t3
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In terms of support longevity I'd go with the 2009. The board and equivalent cpus are still in use today, so it's not like Apple can drop it from the supported list too soon. You should be able to find one around the same cost. Deconstruct on here mentioned something interesting, that the 2008 was on the older front side bus rather than QPI.
http://www.barefeats.com/wst10.html
This might be interesting. The 4C Nehalem is the 2010 model. It's clocked slightly higher. I'm just not optimistic regarding the support life of the 2008 as Apple doesn't really promise anything beyond 4-5 years, and given that the 2009 is still essentially the same machine with firmware updates available, this locks you in a bit longer. If you can find a good price on a 2009 such as $1200-1300, I'd call it a reasonably good buy. Some people on here have replaced the 2009 cpu with a W3680 making it roughly equivalent to the $3k machine Apple currently sells. It was appealing as until recently the cpu was $600 and that machine was $3800. Anyway I was hoping for a better update.
http://www.barefeats.com/wst10.html
This might be interesting. The 4C Nehalem is the 2010 model. It's clocked slightly higher. I'm just not optimistic regarding the support life of the 2008 as Apple doesn't really promise anything beyond 4-5 years, and given that the 2009 is still essentially the same machine with firmware updates available, this locks you in a bit longer. If you can find a good price on a 2009 such as $1200-1300, I'd call it a reasonably good buy. Some people on here have replaced the 2009 cpu with a W3680 making it roughly equivalent to the $3k machine Apple currently sells. It was appealing as until recently the cpu was $600 and that machine was $3800. Anyway I was hoping for a better update.
Thanks for the replys, future support was my biggest concern with lion right around the corner. As I'm only going to use this machine until a REAL update comes out next year & both of the choices will be supported with lion I'm also wondering which one will perform better. $300 for RAM right now is ridiculous & could easily push me towards the 2009 if having less cores would still give me good performance.