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Consider a Mac Pro - how loud is the 4870?

O

Oi-Oi-Oi

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 16, 2009
60
0
New York
Hi all,

I currently have a Mini and am looking at making the upgrade to a Mac Pro. To be honest I don't need the power of the MacPro other than wanting to play games on it via a bootcamped Windows partition.

So I want a powerfull graphics card and was wondering if anyone here has a 4870 in their 09 Pro and has it running under XP or Vista (can you even run up XP on a Pro?).

Also how loud is the 4870? One of the many reason why I love Macs is their quietness. From my PC days I hated graphics card that made a huge noise.

I gues the other thing I like about the Pro's is that fact that you can upgrade some parts yourself.

Cheers!
 
Any time. Don't forget, though, that if you go for an iMac you'll never be able to add another GPU, upgrade the one you get with the machine, add more than one internal hard drive or more than 4 GB of RAM.

Though if you don't really need all that, I don't suppose it really matters. :D
 
Mackilroy said:
Any time. Don't forget, though, that if you go for an iMac you'll never be able to add another GPU, upgrade the one you get with the machine, add more than one internal hard drive or more than 4 GB of RAM.

Though if you don't really need all that, I don't suppose it really matters. :D
Click to expand...

the new imacs can now hold 8gbs of ram :D
 
Mackilroy said:
Any time. Don't forget, though, that if you go for an iMac you'll never be able to add another GPU, upgrade the one you get with the machine, add more than one internal hard drive or more than 4 GB of RAM.

Though if you don't really need all that, I don't suppose it really matters. :D
Click to expand...

And you're stuck with that screen....
 
The 4870s really aren't very loud. A Mac Pro is definitely louder than a Mac Mini but significantly quieter than most PCs out there. I've got a 2006 Mac Pro with two 4870 1GB cards in it and its very quiet indeed. In fact, I have it sitting on top of my desk about 50cm away from my head and I'd never say its loud (apart from when it first turns on and the 4870s spin up to max - but that only lasts about a second). I was considering moving my Mac Pro under my desk recently but that was only for the extra desk space. My cat vetoed the idea though since she likes sitting on top of it for the warmth.
 
Honestly, so far my 4870 is WHISPER quiet except during initial bootup (when the fans run to max at powerup.) The whole machine for that matter is darn near silent. I found it funny that the hard drive in my 1GB Time Capsule was louder while backing up my Pro than the entire Mac Pro 2009 was and the TC was on the other side of the room!

It might get a bit louder when heavy gaming... I've been playing some games of Supreme commander under Windows 7 on mine and honestly, I haven't even noticed any fan noise (but then, I also have the game sound up and headphones for voice chat on.)
 
I've got this ATi card and I must say that I haven't noticed it being loud at all. Granted I haven't played games on it yet so probably haven't pushed the graphics card anywhere near it's limit.
 
I just received mine. Ive been playing fear 2 and L4D! Its super quiet and I'm so glad I paid the extra $200 for it. :)
 
jnc said:
And you're stuck with that screen....
Click to expand...

Nah...that's not 100% true. New iMacs have a miniDisplayPort, allowing users to expand to an alternative display taking full advantages of the 30" too!

jnc said:
Why? The iMac's got nothing on its expandability, and generally the better performer all-round
Click to expand...

Doesn't come across like you like your iMac, all that much to me.. :rolleyes:
 
DeepCobalt said:
Mine is super quiet, except at boot-up for a few seconds.
Click to expand...

I think the full throttle fan thing is just to blow the dust off of the inner parts. :)

I always thought my G4 tower was quite. I guess I was comparing it to Windows PC I had at work. Now, after I've had my Mac Pro for about a week, my G4 now seems loud.

After I got mine last week, I checked to see how much noise my HD was making and it was very quite, so I looked at what type of drive my Mac Pro had and then I order another one just like it.

I also watched a DVD movie on it and the optical drive was quiet. Some had said their optical drives made a lot of noise, when play a DVD, but mine doesn't.
 
UltraNEO* said:
Nah...that's not 100% true. New iMacs have a miniDisplayPort, allowing users to expand to an alternative display taking full advantages of the 30" too!
Click to expand...

...You will still be stuck with that screen. Plus an additional one.

Doesn't come across like you like your iMac, all that much to me.. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Don't have one. Way too limiting. Mac Pro + external (Dell, in my case) display = ideal
 
My Early 2008 Mac Pro is remarkably quiet. Very impressive! We used to have a Quicksilver 733 MHz G4 and I could hear it from the other room, no problem. Now, I can barely hear the Mac Pro when in the same room with it. I love how quiet it is. Part of that is the WD6400AAKS drives (two of them), but most of it is just the design of the Mac Pro, with those two large fans and the large cross section of air flow starting at the front and going all the way through the machine out the back. It's a very intelligently designed machine. In fact, it's the computer I've always dreamed about. I love love love my Mac Pro. I love the hard drive sleds and how easy it is to remove or install a hard drive. I love the slow moving, quiet fans. I love the aluminum case. I love the two memory risers and how easy it is to install memory. I love the FW400 and 800 inputs front and back. I love that I can expand the RAM to 32 GB. I love the four PCIe 2.0 slots, the bottom one double wide.

It's a beautiful and powerful machine.

And it's nice to know that when I upgrade to the 4870 that it will still be very quiet. (There's a 2600 in it right now).

An iMac is nice too, but you just can't beat the expandability and versatility and power of a Mac Pro.
 
Whisper x2

Just switched from a water cooled PC (Zalman Reserater2) and I'm extremely happy with the lack of noise. I had the PC's CPU GPU and GPU memory all watercooled because the stock Ati1900 was LOUD, but now with my Mac it's just as quiet.

Been playing Far Cry 2 at max settings and been too engrossed to notice noise!
 
Thanks!!!

EVERYONE!

Thanks heaps for your valuable feedback. I agree with those of you who mentioned the flexibility of upgrading the MP: HDD, Graphics card, RAM etc.

Now I just have to make a decision :)

Thanks again!
 
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