Hey everyone,
I'm relatively new to this board, but a lurker for a while. Now I come to you looking for some advice.
I am getting a new Mac Pro tomorrow. My Dual 2.3 G5 (late-2005) had its power supply replaced about two months ago. It ran fine for a while, then when I returned home from Christmas visits it refused to power on (light flash). I got it to start once, and it quit again the next day. Well, to make a long story relatively short, after ordering a new logic board, CPU, and another power supply, the genius bar tech could not get it to POST. Since they have already had it close to three weeks, and another CPU would be at least seven days with no promise of success, they are offering me a brand new base model Mac Pro, on the house.
My question is, what should I upgrade or modify on the new machine right in the shop. My G5 was pretty heavily upgraded, including 8 GB of RAM, two 500 GB SATA drives in RAID 0, and an ATI Radeon X1900 (GT?) 256 MB video card.
I know the Mac Pro will be light years ahead of what I have, but the RAM will be a problem. I assume I am better off getting 8 GB from Crucial than paying Apple big money for it. How about the video card? Does anyone have experience with the GeForce 8800GT? Can the Mac Pro boot a RAID 0 volume like my G5 can, or I am better off keeping the 320 GB drive as the boot drive and putting mine in as a storage/encoding volume.
I am a Computer Science graduate student with years of experience playing with computer hardware. I use this machine for software development, number crunching, as well as recording TV and playing some games occasionally. I am mainly looking for feedback from people who have this machine, and have tried various modifications. I am able to spend a few hundred on this to make it the best it can be.
All in all I know I'm extremely lucky to be getting this offer, I just want to maximize my benefit right now!
Hope to hear some feedback.
Thanks,
Bill
I'm relatively new to this board, but a lurker for a while. Now I come to you looking for some advice.
I am getting a new Mac Pro tomorrow. My Dual 2.3 G5 (late-2005) had its power supply replaced about two months ago. It ran fine for a while, then when I returned home from Christmas visits it refused to power on (light flash). I got it to start once, and it quit again the next day. Well, to make a long story relatively short, after ordering a new logic board, CPU, and another power supply, the genius bar tech could not get it to POST. Since they have already had it close to three weeks, and another CPU would be at least seven days with no promise of success, they are offering me a brand new base model Mac Pro, on the house.
My question is, what should I upgrade or modify on the new machine right in the shop. My G5 was pretty heavily upgraded, including 8 GB of RAM, two 500 GB SATA drives in RAID 0, and an ATI Radeon X1900 (GT?) 256 MB video card.
I know the Mac Pro will be light years ahead of what I have, but the RAM will be a problem. I assume I am better off getting 8 GB from Crucial than paying Apple big money for it. How about the video card? Does anyone have experience with the GeForce 8800GT? Can the Mac Pro boot a RAID 0 volume like my G5 can, or I am better off keeping the 320 GB drive as the boot drive and putting mine in as a storage/encoding volume.
I am a Computer Science graduate student with years of experience playing with computer hardware. I use this machine for software development, number crunching, as well as recording TV and playing some games occasionally. I am mainly looking for feedback from people who have this machine, and have tried various modifications. I am able to spend a few hundred on this to make it the best it can be.
All in all I know I'm extremely lucky to be getting this offer, I just want to maximize my benefit right now!
Hope to hear some feedback.
Thanks,
Bill
