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Question for you guys… I will be getting a new Mac Pro with TWO 30" displays, but I also want to use my existing 23" Display -- what graphics card do I get. I am confused at all of the different ones. I suppose I should use option "2 x ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT", which I'm guessing would be two cards, one for a 30" and a 23" and the other for the other 30", leaving one DVI ports open for another monitor if I decided to spend more money. But I've been reading negative things about this card in this thread, but there's not an option to get TWO NVIDIA cards…

What to do?
what kind of work are you planning to do on theese? you probably can get one 8800gt and ad a 2600xt as it becomes available as a add-on option. i think two 8800gt would consume more than the specified max. wattage.
 
what kind of work are you planning to do on theese? you probably can get one 8800gt and ad a 2600xt as it becomes available as a add-on option. i think two 8800gt would consume more than the specified max. wattage.
2 8800GT's should only need about 210 W of power.
 
my bad... and as apple supplies two external powerconnectors for the 5600 and the 8800 only need one :)

8800GTX and the 8800Ultra require 2 as well. I think it has something to do with the higher end G80 cores that the three use.
 
I'm really not trying to start a brawl here, just add perspective... :eek:

Fair enough, but with the lackadaisical way IBM and (especially) Motorola advanced the PowerPC, if Apple had stayed with the chip, we'd likely still be behind the curve compared to where we are now with Intel and would remain so pretty much forever.

So we might have faster PowerPC-based Macs, but they'd still be slower then our current Intel-based Macs and either cost us more or cost Apple more (so they'd be even slower at updating then they are now).
 
What redesign? Doubt that happens, but we will see.

That redesign that is long over due and needed to put the MacBook Pro up against a lot of the 17" PCs out there. Not that the design is bad, just old, and makes it hard for Apple to stick more necessary hardware in the case, like more FW400 or 800 ports, an eSATA port, maybe a second HDD somewhere some how if they make the case a tad bit larger.

Really just something that makes the 17" MBP a little stronger than the 15"
 
That redesign that is long over due and needed to put the MacBook Pro up against a lot of the 17" PCs out there. Not that the design is bad, just old, and makes it hard for Apple to stick more necessary hardware in the case, like more FW400 or 800 ports, an eSATA port, maybe a second HDD somewhere some how if they make the case a tad bit larger.

Really just something that makes the 17" MBP a little stronger than the 15"

Second HDD? Not everyone wants a larger, heavier case for the 17 in. I would like more ports too, but I still want a portable machine.
 
Fair enough, but with the lackadaisical way IBM and (especially) Motorola advanced the PowerPC, if Apple had stayed with the chip, we'd likely still be behind the curve compared to where we are now with Intel and would remain so pretty much forever.

So we might have faster PowerPC-based Macs, but they'd still be slower then our current Intel-based Macs and either cost us more or cost Apple more (so they'd be even slower at updating then they are now).

Are you at all aware of what IBM has been doing with processors?
 
Wow For $780 you can get 16 gigs of ram for the new Mac Pro from OWC.

Apple charges $3500.


And for $1400, you can get 16 gigs of ram (4x4 gigs) from OWC for the new Mac Pro.

Apple Charges $4300

AND if you want 32 gigs of ram, OWC charges $2749

Apple Charges $9,100

I think this is the most severe case of ripping people off for ram.

IF ANYBODY buys Ram from Apple read this post and think twice before doing it!!

I can get 32 gigs of ram for my Mac Pro and still have 7 THOUSAND DOLLARS to spend...That's the price of another Mac Pro!
 
Second HDD? Not everyone wants a larger, heavier case for the 17 in. I would like more ports too, but I still want a portable machine.

You can stick two 2.5" drives on top of each other and their height would be 1.1" or so. I don't want a super heavy notebook either, but I would like one that is worthy of the name "desktop replacement" and had enough HDD space to negate carrying around a second external drive.

More ports is a definite however. There needs to be more than an extra USB port on the 17" book.

Wow For $780 you can get 16 gigs of ram for the new Mac Pro from OWC.

This was the option I was looking at with tears in my eyes. Gotta love progress. Hope to see such wonderful news about the MacBook Pro in a few days.
 
I'm not sure what's making people so uppity about such a simple observation. It's like I insulted somebody's mother...
I'm sorry, I think you're missing something. All you prove here is the fact that, clock for clock, the G5 is as fast as a Penryn. So what ? AMD's athlon was clock for clock faster than any P4 that came out, but it still was destroyed when S478 came out. I think the old Athon was even faster then Athlon64, clock for clock. Does that mean the original Athlon still "holds its own" today :rolleyes:.

Have you forgotten why the G5 failed ? It didn't scale properly, remember, because it was way to hot (liquid cooling ring a bell ?) Penryn scales fantastically, so it is definately the better technology. performance per Watt, move over G5 ;)
I guess what I'm missing now is what your point is... I said that G5 holds its own performance wise. I think you're agreeing with me there.

I'm talking about performance, not heat. Of course I'd expect a 45nm G5 to be much lower power than its aged cousin was 2 process generations ago, and maybe it could even do without the liquid cooling, but hey-- that never happened. I'd also expect that with all the extra transistors and the improved process in the Penryn we'd see improved performance and reduced heat, but we don't.

Fair enough, but with the lackadaisical way IBM and (especially) Motorola advanced the PowerPC, if Apple had stayed with the chip, we'd likely still be behind the curve compared to where we are now with Intel and would remain so pretty much forever.

So we might have faster PowerPC-based Macs, but they'd still be slower then our current Intel-based Macs and either cost us more or cost Apple more (so they'd be even slower at updating then they are now).
That's the assumption I've been hearing all along, and I think the numbers refute that. There are a lot of reasons to have switched to Intel, but raw performance doesn't seem to have been one of them. Frequency of updates doesn't seem to be one of them either. Comparing the most stripped down system, the Mini, I'd say cost wasn't a reason.

Just to be clear, I don't expect doubling the number of cores to double performance when all other things are equal. Usually you get something like 80% improvement even when the task at hand is sufficiently threaded. I'm just saying Intel had to put a lot of time, silicon, design and process engineering into making up that difference while also benefiting from improved memory technology, etc. Despite the marketing glitz, switching to Intel didn't put us on a whole new performance curve.
Right, if you make silicon more colder, it will run more faster. Overclocking relies on a combination of this property, manufacturing margins (conservative specs to improve production yield) and reliability targets. If Intel thought enough of the 3.2GHz chips could reliably run at 4GHz with existing heatsinking they wouldn't throw away the profit of adding a higher performance bin.
 
I wouldnt get too excited about no Blu Ray-By this time next year it will be NO Ray-none nyet nada. It is on life support from SONY-HD didnt have that luxury

HD is really "The big yawn of 2007" for 90% of the buying public-kind of like SACD/DVD-A
 
I wouldnt get too excited about no Blu Ray-By this time next year it will be NO Ray-none nyet nada. It is on life support from SONY-HD didnt have that luxury

HD is really "The big yawn of 2007" for 90% of the buying public-kind of like SACD/DVD-A

Amen. Not too much distribution happens on Blu-Ray or HD-DVD to make it worth putting it on the Mac Pro, and I am sure that most users don't want to pay for it. There is a misconception that Apple will offer it at no extra cost... like it would be standard or something.

Both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are wonderful formats, but they haven't taken off in the consumer market other than the few users that have adopted it. In fact, there are still a majority of consumers who don't even know it exists.

It's truly a big yawn. If you need HD optical drives, get externals.
 
So The ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT Will Work In First Gen Mac Pros?

Doesn't make a whole lot of sense, since the specs for the x2600 XT also state it is a PCI Express 2.0 card, yet you can configure the Mac Pro with 4 of them... when there are only 2 PCI Express 2.0 slots.

Other evidence elsewhere on the 'net seems to say otherwise as well.
So are we certain the new ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT will work in the "old" Mac Pros then? Just slower? Or is it completely incompatible?
 
Under $9,500 Basic Tricked Out

Without all the raid stuff you can configure one @ 3.2GHz with 4 1TB Seagate 32MB cache drives from PC Connection and 32GB of RAM from OWC for under $9,500. Not bad. About what I expected.
 
Apple was offered the Cell but they refused. Most likely because they already had a working OS X for Intel in their pocket.

They refused because it is an awful general purpose CPU. Nearly every program on the mac is written with general purpose CPU's (GPCPU) in mind. If you add more of these then the programs get faster (even without multithreading because there are always other programs running in the background).

The cell has only 1 GPCPU which means for general use it will feel like a uniprocessor machine. It would be lighting fast for doing massive image processing and video conversion but it would not be smooth switching between apps. Even iTunes would probably start skipping if the only GPCPU got overloaded.
 
Are you at all aware of what IBM has been doing with processors?

We have a couple AIX servers lurking about in the data-center. Have to ask the Unix guys.

Seriously, I hit the Power6 entry on wiki. On first glance, it looks weaker technically then a Xeon, but I've been in IT long enough to know better then go off first-glances. ;) I see they changed the instruction execution order so the PowerPC binaries would have needed to be re-compiled for maximum performance, though I imagine that is easier then re-writing them for Intel. Do you happen to know off the top of your head what the TDP's are for the parts?


There are a lot of reasons to have switched to Intel, but raw performance doesn't seem to have been one of them. Frequency of updates doesn't seem to be one of them either. Comparing the most stripped down system, the Mini, I'd say cost wasn't a reason.

I'll spot you the first and last ones, but Intel does offer Apple a faster product cycle then PowerPC did. It is just that Apple (for various reasons) chooses to move slower.
 
The fact remains, 60 FPS is it! The human brain can't tell the difference.

You're right.

That explains why all of the HD LCD television are going ga-ga over bragging about all their new 120 Hz displays, obviously.

I guess that some human brains must be more advanced than others....

</sarcasm>
 
That explains why all of the HD LCD television are going ga-ga over bragging about all their new 120 Hz displays...

Don't take this as support for ckurowic's invective. I think he's being a jerk and his arguments are ridiculous. Despite his protests to the contrary, it's clear he really doesn't get what the word "average" means.

That said... isn't the whole appeal of 120Hz simply the fact that it's evenly divisible by both 60fps and 24fps so that you can avoid jittery 3:2 pulldown when presenting film-sourced content? In other words it's not that 120Hz is desirable on its face, but that it's good to be able to display 24fps content without molesting it.

I'm not sure the existence of 120Hz displays really makes your point.
 
That said... isn't the whole appeal of 120Hz simply the fact that it's evenly divisible by both 60fps and 24fps so that you can avoid jittery 3:2 pulldown when presenting film-sourced content? In other words it's not that 120Hz is desirable on its face, but that it's good to be able to display 24fps content without molesting it.

I'm not sure the existence of 120Hz displays really makes your point.

Being a multiple of both is real handy, as both look good without dropping frames. Something Riding Giants or Zz-boys might have needed...
 
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