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Mac Pro config advice (beginning of Aug purchase)

design-is

design-is

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Oct 17, 2007
1,219
1
London / U.K.
Hi all :)

Towards the beginning of August we are possibly getting two new Mac Pro's at work and I've been asked to advise on the configuration of the new machines.

Currently we have 2xG5 (1 really old and a bit tempermental, one just old) and 1 Intel based Mac Pro (unknown spec - not my machine - about 1 1/2 years old).

We are the in-house design team for a greeting card company/publisher & the G5's choke on large image files, large Quark files and especially when doing the order forms (lots of tabular data and images in a Quark document).

Most files are stored on the server, so disk space isn't a priority.

Obviously an all singing, all dancing, top range machine would be lovely...

But I reckon a couple of stock 8 cores will be more than enough to keep everyone happy and be 'future-proof' (if there is such a thing) for a good number of years (6+?).

I welcome everyone's thoughts & advice...

Thanks in advance!

/Doug
 
I would get the Quad, with Airport Extreme, and AppleCare. Then, i would buy cheaper RAM from MacSales, and put in another 2 2GB sticks in later.

Our Mac Pro at work seem to run fine, and we deal with 2GB to 4GB Photoshop files on a daily basis.
 
Cheers for the advice guys.

@Sweetfeld28 - The Quad core would certainly do the trick, but knowing the boss would not want to buy anything else for a long time, would the Octo core not be wiser? Airport not needed, every machine has an ethernet cable waiting (well, used by older models at the moment, but will be used for newer when they're switched).

@Shake 'n' Bake - This was my thinking, but not sure if the boss would want to order ram separately or if they would want to keep it all under the AppleCare. BTW, I'm in the UK, so no OWC, but I've always been happy with Crucial.
 
A 2.66 GHz octocore + 8 GB RAM + AppleCare = 3894 pounds.

If that is within budget, get it.

Refurbs may also be worth a look. They come with the same warranty and stuff.

That 3.2 GHz one looks good. You'd have to either buy Apple RAM and have them install it or get your own though.
 
Was in an Apple Store yesterday and the Specialist said that if I upgraded the RAM myself on a 13" MacBook Pro it would void the warranty. Didn't talk about the Mac Pro.

Sounds crazy if Mac Pro's feature is expandability that upgrading RAM yourself would void warranty.

Perhaps the Specialist is incorrect about upgrading RAM on a MBP would void warranty??
 
Luba Cox said:
Was in an Apple Store yesterday and the Specialist said that if I upgraded the RAM myself on a 13" MacBook Pro it would void the warranty. Didn't talk about the Mac Pro.

Sounds crazy if Mac Pro's feature is expandability that upgrading RAM yourself would void warranty.

Perhaps the Specialist is incorrect about upgrading RAM on a MBP would void warranty??
Click to expand...

On the Mac Pro, you can upgrade RAM, HDDs, and graphics cards, and add cards without voiding the warranty.
 
Yeh, Mac Pro's are fine for upgrading yourself. They only get funny if you mess around in your MBP and break something. If you do it right, you won't leave any trail and they will still honour your warranty. You may have to put the original bits back first though, so they don't blame the fault on your new hardware. Seems to differ a little depending where you go though, and how nice the person is you talk to.
 
My response to boss of company money if anyone cares :)

Hi [big boss]

I've discussed with [direct boss] and she's asked me to put together an email with the options, facts and thoughts.

Mac Pros:

Looking at the Apple website ( http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/home/shop_mac/family/mac_pro?mco=MTE3MDU) there are currently 2 'stock' options. We feel that either of these would suffice for the time being, with the more expensive, 8-core being the best option for most performance enhancement and future-proofing. The cheaper, quad-core, will most likely start feeling 'sluggish' far sooner and this therefore would minimise the return on investment potential.

These machines don't really need any additional enhancement past the stock product. Processor bumps would likely see negligible performance increases and 6GB of memory should be more than enough for the time being (upgrades could be purchased later more cheaply from somewhere such as crucial.com if needed). However, the addition of an extra drive may be useful if we were to utilize the time machine functionality to back-up our systems or if dual booting became necessary (for web browser testing of amendments to the website for example). Alternatively, time machine backup to the server may be possible.

Monitors:

The LaCie monitors are definitely known to be the best available for colour reproduction and this is reflected in the price. However, the fact that screens can never accurately reproduce a print colour spectrum may need to be considered. Calibration software and tools are available to get the closest match possible, but external factors such as natural & artificial light all effect the result.

An alternative is the option of a larger, 30", screen, which has been shown to increase productivity. LaCie also produce a larger screen, but the price is prohibitive.

Further reading on monitors -
http://www.petefreitag.com/item/552.cfm
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/30inch-LCD-monitors,review-1293.html
http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/reviews/index.cfm?reviewid=997

We look forward to hearing your thoughts and discussing the possibilities.

Kind regards

[me]
Click to expand...
 
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