Mac Pro - A Few Questions

[frome]

I am planning to buy a Mac Pro in the next few weeks. I am planning to buy a Mac Pro with a ATI Radeon X1900 XT, Apple Cinema Display 20", 160 GB HD and Airport Extreme Card.

I am wondering what set up would be better for what I plan to do (Latest Games, Photoshop CS, Aperture, Final Cut Pro, and 3D Modeling and Animation), Two 2.66 GHZ Dual Core Xeon processors and 1GB 667 DDR2 FB DIMM ECC or Two 2.0 GHZ Dual Core Xeon processors and 2GB 667 DDR2 FB DIMM ECC.

Also will Microsoft Windows XP SP2 and Microsoft Vista Beta 2 run well on the Mac Pro and will windows games e.g., Half Life 2, Dawn Of War and Crysis (When it is released next year on Vista) run well?

 

[daneoni]

I am planning to buy a Mac Pro in the next few weeks. I am planning to buy a Mac Pro with a ATI Radeon X1900 XT, Apple Cinema Display 20", 160 GB HD and Airport Extreme Card.

I am wondering what set up would be better for what I plan to do (Latest Games, Photoshop CS, Aperture, Final Cut Pro, and 3D Modeling and Animation), Two 2.66 GHZ Dual Core Xeon processors and 1GB 667 DDR2 FB DIMM ECC or Two 2.0 GHZ Dual Core Xeon processors and 2GB 667 DDR2 FB DIMM ECC.

Also will Microsoft Windows XP SP2 and Microsoft Vista Beta 2 run well on the Mac Pro and will windows games e.g., Half Life 2, Dawn Of War and Crysis (When it is released next year on Vista) run well?

I'd go the extra mile and get a 2.66GHz/2GB config, you'll thank yourself you did. Choking the processors is something you dont wanna do. and 1GB does that. The 2GB upgrade from Apple i think is reasonable..i may be wrong

My rule is buy the biggest processor and video card you can from Apple, you can always upgrade RAM later.

XP should run fine on the Mac Pro whilst Vista might require extra work but should work as well

 

[pknz]

You may find you'll run out of space on a 160GB harddrive if you plan to run OS X, XP and Vista as well as use some pretty large file types in some of those apps. Unless you have external storage, however, if not you can always add harddrives in later.

 

[frome]

Thanks for the quick reply...

 

[Umbongo]

You may find you'll run out of space on a 160GB harddrive if you plan to run OS X, XP and Vista as well as use some pretty large file types in some of those apps. Unless you have external storage, however, if not you can always add harddrives in later.

With 250GB drives for $75 from newegg (same amount you save when downgrading on the BTO page), it's not worth getting anything but the 160GB from Apple at the moment, aside from technical issues the user may be fearful of.

edit: Not quite the same saving down under, but barely much different. I found an 8mb cache, 250GB 7200.10 Seagate for $120, which is how much you save by downgrading and the 16MB cache version for $137 from http://shop.pc.net.au/

 

[vinylator]

I have the 2.66 Ghz / X1900XT and 1 gig RAM, do you guys think I wil notice a difference when I add a gig? Going to install Lightwave soon. For now the most intensive app I use is World of Warcraft. Do you think I will feel a difference in WOW with the extra gig RAM?

 

[fivetoadsloth]

Get the 2.66 ghz you can always upgrade the ram later the processors are aloth arder to upgrade. Good luck with the new machine

 

[fivetoadsloth]

I have the 2.66 Ghz / X1900XT and 1 gig RAM, do you guys think I wil notice a difference when I add a gig? Going to install Lightwave soon. For now the most intensive app I use is World of Warcraft. Do you think I will feel a difference in WOW with the extra gig RAM?

Definatly, another gig will make a HUGE difference

 

[Rare]

I have the 2.66 Ghz / X1900XT and 1 gig RAM, do you guys think I wil notice a difference when I add a gig? Going to install Lightwave soon. For now the most intensive app I use is World of Warcraft. Do you think I will feel a difference in WOW with the extra gig RAM?

I have a MacPro with 1GB RAM too, and it is a serious hinderance, my MacBook showed an enormous improvement when I upgraded it from 1GB to 2GB. Shame FB-DIMMs are so insanely expensive, you can buy standard 1GB DDR-II sticks for £50, its stupid how these are £150 per GB, £100 just for Error Correction which makes little difference.