buying my first Mac Pro

[Krise]

Hi guys,
I am new to this forum, and somewhat new to Mac. I made the switch from PCs last year when I bought my first Macbook Pro, and now I want to go the whole way and I have been looking to buy a Mac Pro. The only thing I miss about the PC is the "ease" with which games work, but running Bootcamp on the Macbook made it very simple to boot in XP and play.
My question now is this, are there any drawbacks at all to buying a Mac Pro with regards to gaming? I am looking at the specs of my future beast and it is truly a monster with its 8-core and 8800GT card, will Windows be able to utilize this to it's full potential (I will be running XP not Vista) and make good use of the 30" apple cinema HD display?

Hope you have some pointers for me

Krise

 

[Shownarou]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Windows XP can only utilize 3.5? gigs of ram. I know it's under four. So, if you are using your Mac Pro in Windows XP, know that you're going to be limited on your ram while in XP. You can still have more in your system for osX use, it just won't be used in XP.

 

[Krise]

I did not know that... I will still be using OS X for doing graphical work so I will put in the 8Gb. Thanks for the heads up though.

Krise

 

[Tallest Skil]

All 32-bit OS' can only address 3.3GB of RAM.

64-bit XP can see more.
64-bit Vista can see more.

 

[teohyc]

any limitations you face will be those from the os

 

[Krise]

Thats settled then, now I just need to get the beast ordered Thanks for the advice guys.

Krise

 

[costabunny]

just to add (you did ask) the 8800GT with the 30" will be fine in Windows (well behaved and sexy-pixelmanianess)

Good luck with your new beastie

 

[Krise]

just to add (you did ask) the 8800GT with the 30" will be fine in Windows (well behaved and sexy-pixelmanianess)

Good luck with your new beastie

Thanks I can't wait to see Fallout 3 on this machine, never had a monitor bigger than 19" (been on laptops for the past 2 years)