Base 2009 Mac Pro Config. or CTO 2008 Mac Pro config?

[dazloe]

Hey guys, I have found myself going for the old mac pro (which I will be buying on monday) but I just wanted to check on your opinions with which model to get.

For the same price I can get the following:

2008 Mac Pro (CTO octo core)
2.8GHz X 2 Processors
4GB RAM
Nvidia 8800GT
320GB HDD
Airport extreme card and bluetooth.

OR!

2009 Mac Pro (base configuration, quad core)
2.66GHz quad core
3GB RAM
640GB HDD
Nvidia GT120

Thanks a lot! I also wanted to know which RAM would be faster? the old mac pro 800MHz ram that is fully buffered? or the new mac pro's ram which is 1066 but not fully buffered?

Thanks for your help

PS. it will cost me exactly the same amount of money to get either system and both systems will be brand new.

PPS. I will be using my machine for Audio Production. Rewiring Live 7 and Reason 4 through Logic Studio, using over 50 third party plugins and over 50 tracks on every project!...Thanks again!

 

[Chaos123x]

2008 Mac Pro (CTO octo core)
2.8GHz X 2 Processors
8GB RAM
Ati 4870
320GB HDD
Airport extreme card and bluetooth.

Here I fixed it for you.

Get your ram at OWC

 

[myca]

If you can get a good price on the octo 2.8 I'd go for that.

I really can't see the quad 2.66 beating the octo 2.8 in real world tasks (i could be wrong, but I doubt it very much).

I'd also agree to stick the 4870 in there too, but they can be noisy buggers which could be a problem if you're doing audio.

N/B if you find yourself using large sample banks the 2.8 octo can hold more RAM, so you won't have to stream from the disk as much (for certain plugs any way).

 

[dazloe]

Thanks for the responses guys, about the RAM: I only buy kingston because they have a lifetime warranty and have never failed me. The 4GB of kingston will be the initial RAM I will start with, but I'm going to bump it up to 16 about 2 weeks after I get it (if I need to, I found that that really helped when I bumped up my powermac) plus because it's been on the production line for a while, it's quite cheap especially compared to the RAM used in the new mac pro.

Also on the topic of ram; anyone know the difference in performance between the Fully Buffered 800MHz and the regular 1066MHz? I'm thinking (and hoping ) that the buffered RAM would be faster.

The AMD graphics card does look nice, but I'm mainly using it for intense audio, sure a little call of duty here and there is great, but it isn't anything the 8800 can't handle. I'm also looking into photography. I already use photoshop heaps for album artwork, but I wanted to branch into aperture for more in depth editing. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the 8800 should be able to handle that? Thanks heaps for your time.

PS. sorry about the lengthy post...

 

[sidewinder]

dazloe,

The 2009 Mac Pro Quad Core system is limited to 8GB of RAM, at least according to Apple.

S-

 

[dazloe]

dazloe,

The 2009 Mac Pro Quad Core system is limited to 8GB of RAM, at least according to Apple.

S-

sorry I should have been more clear, if I decide to go for the octo, I will install 16GB of RAM, I am definitely leaning towards the octo, but anymore feedback would be great

 

[Chaos123x]

OWC does not sell kingston or life time warranty RAM?

 

[dazloe]

OWC does not sell kingston or life time warranty RAM?

sorry, me not being clear again. I wouldn't be buying it from OWC I work in a computer shop that sells Kingston RAM so I can get it for cheaper

 

[CaptainChunk]

Thanks for the responses guys, about the RAM: I only buy kingston because they have a lifetime warranty and have never failed me. The 4GB of kingston will be the initial RAM I will start with, but I'm going to bump it up to 16 about 2 weeks after I get it (if I need to, I found that that really helped when I bumped up my powermac) plus because it's been on the production line for a while, it's quite cheap especially compared to the RAM used in the new mac pro.

OWC RAM is lifetime warranty as well. I've been ordering from them for years and I have not once encountered a problem with their memory modules.

 

[myca]

This may interest you,

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/7206034/

It's doing benchmarks with the 2.8 octo and a hackintosh i7 quad nehalem 2.66.

And it looks as though the 2.8 octo comes out on top, especially on integer and floating point, both of which will be used heavily in music production. It actually loses out on memory and stream, but that looks like one of the advantage of the new chips.

The AMD graphics card does look nice, but I'm mainly using it for intense audio, sure a little call of duty here and there is great, but it isn't anything the 8800 can't handle. I'm also looking into photography. I already use photoshop heaps for album artwork, but I wanted to branch into aperture for more in depth editing. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the 8800 should be able to handle that? Thanks heaps for your time.

One thing to maybe keep in mind is that the 4870 will be more future proof, and when snow leopard rolls out the GPU will be able to be used by the OS and apps to speed things up, and fingers crossed the next Logic Pro might make use of the GPUs. I think it's called Open CL if I remember right. But the 8800 should do what you want it to do for today.