Buying my Mac Pro on Monday! Should I pick Quad 2.93 or Octa 2.26?

[sigmadog]

A lot of talk on the 2.93 quad vs the 2.26 octo. My question on here would be, is the baseline $2300(edu) 2.66 Quad be sufficient for Graphic Design work that doesn't involve too much 3D. I'm a design student about to enter my last year of college and want to get a Mac Pro for my Capestone. I want this mac pro to last me a good 4-5 years as i enter the design world. Coming from a MBP+MB setup i would expect tremendous results from what I'm seeing now anyway.

I'm a designer myself. I don't do any video editing; I'm not a gamer; I don't do animation; and I do very little 3d rendering.

Originally, I was looking at the 2.66 8-core mainly due to the RAM limitations that seemed to be placed on the quads (8GB max? On a "Pro" model?). But now that it has been verified that the quads can take up to 16GB, and many benchmarks have shown that the primary processor speed will help more with most design apps than multiple processors, I'm on board for saving some dough and going with a quad. I'll probably jump up to the 2.93, for the extra boost in processor speed.

Just for comparison, I've had a Dual 2.0GHz G5 PowerMac for the last 5 years, and it's been doing great with 5.5GB RAM. The way i look at it, if I can survive for that long (doing some pretty intensive Photoshop work and juggling large files and multiple apps open at once) with the Dual G5, the Quad Intel will be... well... amazing! I'll probably boost it to 8GB RAM and never look back - although the possibility of 16GB RAM down the road is also appealing.

So, yeah. Grab the 2.66 (or the 2.93 if you can afford it). It will be great for design work.

 

[MasterM6]

Okey finaly back! Damn USB keyboard LoL

vaderhater245 get the 2.93 it is so amazing that I can not tell you in words!

 

[Tesselator]

A lot of talk on the 2.93 quad vs the 2.26 octo. My question on here would be, is the baseline $2300(edu) 2.66 Quad be sufficient for Graphic Design work that doesn't involve too much 3D. I'm a design student about to enter my last year of college and want to get a Mac Pro for my Capestone.

Yes, it'll do.. but so will the quad 2.26. If you're not rendering much you won't notice that much difference. Both are TERRIBLY overpriced as Nehalen based systems go however. Almost two times from what you can do by building your own with the intentions of installing OS X. So for what Apple wants for the 2.26 quad you could be on a 3.2 quad - but without Apple's classy case. If you're a poor student that might a consideration.

I want this mac pro to last me a good 4-5 years as i enter the design world. Coming from a MBP+MB setup i would expect tremendous results from what I'm seeing now anyway.

That depends. If you were on the MBP with the Intel Core 2 Duo processor running at 2.93GHz the 2.66 and the 2.26 will both be a downgrade - not an upgrade! The I/O is a little slower on the MBP, the RAM access is maybe a tad slower, and the MBP isn't as expandable but other than that it's a faster machine than the 2.26 or the 2.66. So by forming high expectations like this you may be setting yourself up for a let-down.

If you get the new Mac Pro with a 4870 ATI the screen (GUI) will certainly seem faster than the MBP!

<shrug>

 

[HDnut]

Thanks for all the help guys, back from vacation and ironically loving using my newer Macbook, this thing for the money is a amazing and runs some of my Pro Apps fine. Well since the vacation wasn't too rough on my pocket book I am looking at the 2.93 Quad or the 2.66 Octa. Still not sure, but for future expandability the Octa machine looks like it might be the ticket. The only think I don't like about the Quad units was the expandability of the memory, they should have made them 32gigs as well. Even though that has been proven wrong and these machines can except more.

 

[Mac Husky]

Welcome back in the what-the-hell-to-buy-circus

 

[HDnut]

Welcome back in the what-the-hell-to-buy-circus

Yep, typing on my Macbook and doing projects on this little beast isn't as bad as I thought it would be. This notebook is a great travel companion, and it is much faster than I thought it would be. So now I might wait, but I already miss my Mac Pro.. So, now for me the 2.66 Octa or 2.93 Quad is the way to go, just wondering if the 8 core will be utilized more by Snow Leopard when it comes out, I do run a ton of Apps at one time and my old Mac Pro would slow down a ton when I did this. Running several videos, and rendering another while I am working on CS4 or some other pictures. But then again I only had 2gigs of memory.

Mac Pro Z0G8 1 $3,423.00 $3,423.00
One 2.93GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 065-8314
Aperture preinstalled 065-8260
Apple Mighty Mouse 065-7938
Country Kit 065-7963
8GB (4x2GB) 065-8429
Apple Keyboard with Numeric Keypad (English) and User's Guide 065-7943
ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB 065-8316
One 18x SuperDrive 065-7923
1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s 065-7906

Or

Mac Pro Z0G1 1 $4,619.00 $4,619.00
8GB (4x2GB) 065-7889
Apple Keyboard with Numeric Keypad (English) and User's Guide 065-7943
Country Kit 065-7963
One 18x SuperDrive 065-7923
1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s 065-7906
Apple Mighty Mouse 065-7938
Two 2.66GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 065-7885
ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB 065-8316



About a $1200 buck difference.... Still perplexed on the whole 8 core thing, which I believe will be great once more programs will be able to utilize this, but by the time this actually happens just as one person pointed
out we will most likely see 16 core machines!

Well just ordered the 2.93 machine, as one of the higher end techs called me from Apple today, and said unless I am doing some very heavy computations and or Lab work the 8 core is not needed for what I am doing. The sales guy who was very knowledgeable said the same thing. So it is very nice to see that Apple isn't trying to over sell you... I will bank the extra $1200 bucks for my next machine down the road.. Will have new Machine on Friday....