Considering Mac Pro Quad 2.66GHz

[neiltc13]

I've posted my fair share of help on this forum to people looking at MacBooks and iMacs, but I'm now looking for some advice on Mac Pro myself.

I've got the LED Cinema Display and I'm currently using it with my 2.0GHz MacBook. However, I'm finding I really don't have enough power in this machine to do all that I want to do, and the storage is extremely limited. I'm also eager to get a FireWire 800 port as my external hard drive has one of those.

I want to use my computer mainly for web design work using Photoshop and Dreamweaver and I'm also a very keen gamer. I'd be going for the Radeon 4870 option on the order and while I have the other specs set in stone, I have a few questions about the machine.

1) To get WiFi in OS X, do I have to buy the Airport Card? There are plenty of PCI-e WiFi Cards available elswhere for much less money, and there are also USB options too.

1b) Does that card include Bluetooth too, or does Bluetooth come standard on the machine? The icon on the site indicates it's part of this card.

2) How noisy is this new machine when in use?

3) I really need a lot of USB ports for my devices. Is it possible to add an off the shelf USB 2.0 PCI Express card to the machine and have more USB ports that way?

4) Will it take standard SATAII hard drives? Looking at the prices on the Apple site, they are about two or three times marked up compared to those on eBuyer.com. I read the manual and it lists dimensions required of the drives but I'm not sure. I really want another couple of 500GB drives.

5) Can I install Windows using Boot Camp to a separate drive or does it have to be on the same one as OS X?

6) Can I add an off-the-shelf Blu Ray drive to the machine and get Blu Ray playback (in Windows only of course) and burning in OS X?

7) The 3GB RAM figure seems a bit odd, there are four RAM slots on this machine, so can you just add another 1GB stick and have that total?

The spec of the machine I'm looking at going for is:
2.66GHz Quad Core Xeon
3GB RAM
640GB HDD
ATi Radeon HD 4870 512MB
Wireless Mighty Mouse (already got a mouse, would use this with my MacBook)
Wired Keyboard with Numeric Keypad
AirPort Extreme WiFi card
AppleCare

Including my education discount, the final price is £1826.20.

 

[cciliberto33]

1) To get WiFi in OS X, do I have to buy the Airport Card? There are plenty of PCI-e WiFi Cards available elswhere for much less money, and there are also USB options too.
Im sure they'll work if the manufacture says it Mac compatible.

1b) Does that card include Bluetooth too, or does Bluetooth come standard on the machine? The icon on the site indicates it's part of this card.
Bluetooth is standard


3) I really need a lot of USB ports for my devices. Is it possible to add an off the shelf USB 2.0 PCI Express card to the machine and have more USB ports that way?
like i said before has to be Mac compatible and Im pretty sure you can I bought some for my PowerMac G4

4) Will it take standard SATAII hard drives? Looking at the prices on the Apple site, they are about two or three times marked up compared to those on eBuyer.com. I read the manual and it lists dimensions required of the drives but I'm not sure. I really want another couple of 500GB drives.
Like apple ram Apple over prices it

5) Can I install Windows using Boot Camp to a separate drive or does it have to be on the same one as OS X?
It can be a different drive


7) The 3GB RAM figure seems a bit odd, there are four RAM slots on this machine, so can you just add another 1GB stick and have that total?
Ram is fully upgradable

Hope this helps

 

[techound1]

I use a spare olde UFO-style airport g. I've decided to consider it "old school" and therefore cutting edge stylish.

Noise is the fan running - about the same volume as a normal fan on an apple laptop.

I use a belkin USB freestanding hub and so far, so good!

It seems odd the ram isn't paired. It's my understanding that it runs in the early 2008 (which I think yours is?) best as pairs.

On the blu-ray... I saw someone on ebay had a pro tricked out to include it - not sure how they did it, but it was way over my price range .

 

[alphaod]

7) The 3GB RAM figure seems a bit odd, there are four RAM slots on this machine, so can you just add another 1GB stick and have that total?

Nehalem uses triple-channel memory, so if you use all 4 slots, you lose that. That's also why it's 3GB, as in 3x1GB.