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Is this good for my uses?

L

Lightey

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 10, 2010
185
2
This June, I'm planning on getting the 4 core Mac Pro. Problem is, would this be enough for me?

I do a lot of video editing in iMovie, but I may use Sony Vegas on a Windows partition. I also watch 720p and 1080p videos frequently. Would this be enough, or should I get a 6 core?

And also, you can always upgrade the processor, add a Blu-Ray drive, and add an internal capture card, right?
 
That will be more than enough for you. I'd get the base pro, just for the expandability, if nothing else. The iMacs have the power to do reasonably heavy editing, and any computer can play the HD videos, but since you can't put more hard drives in the iMac, and the "Superdrive" in it kinda sucks for anything other than installing software and watching the occasional DVD, the Mac Pro would be more convenient. Plus you have the power to get into some pretty heavy-duty stuff if you ever wanted or needed to. There are also a few threads about blu-ray on the Mac that you may want to check out
 
If you have the money, get the six core to kind of future proof yourself. If your editing in AVCHD, you'll need allot of horse power plus hard disk space. More ram the better too. Video editing will use all the ram you can throw at it. If you really get hooked into editing, like I did, you will want to step up to FCE/FCP or CS5. Hope you have deep pockets. It's worth every penny to edit.
 
I've added the Bluray, but in a way such that you can, too: External FW device. That's because, as noted above, MPro's have lot's of room for disk expansion. You can put two more SATA drives where the optical drives would be w/o adding another HBA, meabing you can have 6 internal drives from the (nearly) stock configuration. RAID0 scratch can help performance.

I am unaware of the ability to upgrade the CPU on the Nehalem or Westmere models. Chipsets/firmware/sockets -- we're not talking PCs here. Sandy Bridge is different on all of these, so no CPU upgrade when that comes out.

Final note: somewhat difficult to watch a BD on a Mac. Easy (if time-consuming) to rip and burn.
 
Okay, thanks everyone. I may go with the FW Blu-Ray.

I will upgrade the 3 GB of RAM to 7 GB, because I have 4 from my old tower.

How many RAM slots does the Mac Pro have though?
 
Lightey said:
Okay, thanks everyone. I may go with the FW Blu-Ray.

I will upgrade the 3 GB of RAM to 7 GB, because I have 4 from my old tower.

How many RAM slots does the Mac Pro have though?
Click to expand...

it has 4. be sure the other memory is DDR3 1067MHz ECC. If not it won't work.
 
Lightey said:
Okay, thanks everyone. I may go with the FW Blu-Ray.

I will upgrade the 3 GB of RAM to 7 GB, because I have 4 from my old tower.

How many RAM slots does the Mac Pro have though?
Click to expand...

The single-CPU models have 4 slots. Make sure your old RAM is ECC or it won't mix with the shipping 3GB. If you need more RAM, definitely buy aftermarket and not from Apple.
 
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