Mac Pro 2008 is the most ever "bang-for-buck" Mac.

[Pressure]

Yea I am still rocking a 2008 3.0 ghz 8 core recently upgraded with latest HD's and 12gbram. I am now set for another 2 years of joy.

I have used it to render Epically Heavy Duty 3D renders that sometimes took more than 4 months to render with a constant 100% processor load.

Even by todays standards it is more than fast enough .

Best computer I have ever bought. I doubt I will ever buy a MacPro again.

1x12 core is costing me just as much as 5x core i7 machines. If you want renderpower 5k for 1 machine is kind of a daft concept nowadays.

Well, if you renders really do take 4 months to complete, you should really invest in something faster, like yesterday.

If you can decrease the render time by a month, that is a lot of dough saved right there. Much more than it would cost to upgrade to the fastest and most expensive Mac Pro.

 

[tomscott1988]

I have to say if your renders take 4 months then you definitely need something more powerful. How can you say a pro is value for money if your renders take that long, stupid post.

 

[inaka]

most ever "bang-for-buck" Mac was the SE/30.

Just sayin...

 

[Gloor]

Yea I am still rocking a 2008 3.0 ghz 8 core recently upgraded with latest HD's and 12gbram. I am now set for another 2 years of joy.

I have used it to render Epically Heavy Duty 3D renders that sometimes took more than 4 months to render with a constant 100% processor load.

Even by todays standards it is more than fast enough .

Best computer I have ever bought. I doubt I will ever buy a MacPro again.

1x12 core is costing me just as much as 5x core i7 machines. If you want renderpower 5k for 1 machine is kind of a daft concept nowadays.

I agree with others. If your render takes 4 months then you either need to tweak render settings to try and see if you can cut the time or you need to invest in better computer or small render farm.
You use computer constantly for 4 months which means that it is unusable whilst rendering -> can't do any work on it.
Now, you are either paid for that thing and in that case you are even more silly because you are wasting time OR you do it for your own project and in that case you are silly too as 4 months is crazy.

I am doing my own personal project too and once that is done it will probably take few weeks to render too but not more than a month. As a student I can't afford 12 core but I think in your case you could consider it.

OR,

get 2 Mac Pros. That will immediately cut the time in half so you will have extra 2 months to take another project that will probably pay for the extra mac pro.

Either way, you should rethink your silly strategy as clearly this is such a time waster

 

[nanofrog]

I have used it to render Epically Heavy Duty 3D renders that sometimes took more than 4 months to render with a constant 100% processor load.

If this is personal uses, just WOW!

But if you make a living with it, then you'd need to either build a small farm or lease time on a cluster for such jobs. The decreased time to generate the finished output would allow you to take on additional work and make more in the same time than previously possible, so the costs for the additional equipment or lease time, would be worth it.

 

[Etherz10]

Still rockin' my 2006 Quad 2.66.

Ditto