Help customizing a Mac Pro for design please.

You need RAM. A second hard drive would be a good idea too - not necessarily for RAID but as a drive for video work, reducing the problems caused by fragmentation.

Any of the gfx cards should do what you need. Faster processor is better, but not at the expense of RAM - 8gb should be your minimum and I'd go for 12-16gb from preference.

Don't expand your RAM from Apple though - generally cheaper to buy from Crucial afterwards and add it yourself

 

Photoshop CS5 for Mac will be a big boost IF it's going to be 64-bit and if it can run at 64-bit on a Mac.

This will increase the amount of RAM Photoshop can use (which currently tops out at about 3 Gb).

So: get CS5 if it's 64-bit, and get a lot of RAM.

With CS4 the graphics card is being used more by Photoshop, but I can't tell how much importance a fast, high video-RAM card will be.

If you plan to use CS5 extended with video, get a good graphics card.

There are threads about flashing video cards to get better cards (like the Quadro 1,5 Gb) at a decent price, but get info on how reliable this is.

 

I think the low quad core proccessor will be fine, you should probably get 16 GB of ram (install it yourself as apple rips you off) and you should also probably go with the ATI card vs the GT 120

Other than that the HDD depends how much you need, with 16 GB of RAM SSD would probably not be good because of its small size. You could get a 2 TB HDD then get another 1 TB and just use the 1 TB for backups unless you already have something for backups. You should also consider waiting for Hexacore (and possibly new GPUs) if you can wait until summer.

 

Hello.

I do most of what you are intending to do. PS, Illustrator, Dreamweaver and Final Cut / Premiere Pro on a 1st-gen Mac Pro.
The Mac Pro, ANY Mac Pro is ideally suited for these tasks.

Here's my advice for what it's worth:

CPU Upgrade: I would advise the 8-core MP because of two things:
1- as stated earlier, you can use more, less expensive memory modules due to the larger number of slots.
2- Each CPU has it's own memory controller. This means double the memory bandwidth for dual-CPU systems. This can make a profound improvement in Render times. (depending on the App.. most aren't ready yet)
Don't bother with faster CPUs. Just get the Dual-CPU option. CS4 won't utilize 8 cores properly yet, but CS5 almost certainly will be better at this.

Memory: The 8-core comes with 6GB which is adequate for intensive PS and Final Cut sessions, but maybe not for multiple ones. I recommend having Apple do the upgrade before sale. They do not "Rip You Off", merely offer high-quality, tested and approved memory for a fair price.
I suggest 12GB or 24GB with 6 slots full for 6-channel operation.

Video: You want a video card with at least a 256-bit memory interface like the Radeon 4870. The GTX285 or Quadro 4800 would be nicer yet for rendering.

Drives: You want a minimum of 2 drives.
SSD is a very nice but very expensive option. My advice is to wait a bit for SSD... the time is not quite yet. Maybe use a small 30GB one for a scratch disk.
Here is a really good place to save some money and get better drives than Apple offers. My suggestion is 4x Western Digital Caviar Blacks as large and as fast as you want. Unless you get the Apple RAID card, don't bother with RAID. Many drives (including the WD Blacks) can "drop out" of a RAID array and it's just not worth the risk. If you absolutely MUST have RAID, get drives with RAID-friendly firmware.

With 4 internal drives, use #1 for Snow Leopard and Apps, use another for Capture, another for Scratch/Render files and another for Backup, or maybe for a Windows installation. Any external drives should be FireWire 800.


Have fun with that Mac Pro,
Keri