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...says the person who doesn't run their own computer company. Keep in mind whatever option they offer you now they have to be able to support/replace/repair for at least the next 3 years. It's suitable for them to offer some options, but not a ton. I feel this go-around they did a pretty good job in their pics. As for being an all-around machine, the Mac Pro will never be one - this is a professional workstation and it thinks games are for kiddies... (if you have one just ask it!!!)

ps. I'm sure you're aware, but you can put whatever card in there you want - just don't run Mac OS...

You seemed to be quoting me, but I never said what you quoted.. :) And by the way, my PowerMac says WoW is great fun after a long day of crunching video!
 
Education purchases

By the way, for anyone who is interested... and please don't flame me, I'm just passing along info... a friend of mine has been buying through the Apple Education store for years and getting the educational discount even though he doesn't go to school. He simply navigated to the education store from the main store page, entered a random university, completed his purchase, and there were no issues. I think he saved like $200 on his Mac Pro.
 
By the way, for anyone who is interested... and please don't flame me, I'm just passing along info... a friend of mine has been buying through the Apple Education store for years and getting the educational discount even though he doesn't go to school. He simply navigated to the education store from the main store page, entered a random university, completed his purchase, and there were no issues. I think he saved like $200 on his Mac Pro.
Brace yourself, you are indeed going to get flamed for that.
 
By the way, for anyone who is interested... and please don't flame me, I'm just passing along info... a friend of mine has been buying through the Apple Education store for years and getting the educational discount even though he doesn't go to school. He simply navigated to the education store from the main store page, entered a random university, completed his purchase, and there were no issues. I think he saved like $200 on his Mac Pro.

I've noticed a lot of eduction stores "require you to show proof if enrollment", but then never ask for it ...
 
I can't decide between the 8 core 2.8 or 3Ghz

Can anyone tell me/point me towards some info on the performance increase on the 3GHz over the 2.8? The 2.8 system I have specified comes in at just under £2K and it costs another £500 to go to 3GHz. This is an increase of 25% for a .2GHz increase in processor speed which seems like a lot...do you reckon this represents good value? I am a graphic/web designer using CS apps primarily but I also make a bit of music and do some video editing.

If the 3Ghz will make a lot of difference to me then I'll go for it but I could spend that £500 on a lot of other stuff = good audio monitors, a graphics tablet, new ACD (when they come), new camera etc..the list goes on.

How would the 8 core 2.8 compare to last years 8 core 3? Its a slower clock rate but would the newer chip and faster architecture on the new machine give it similar performance?

I'm finally upgrading from my trusty mirror door G4 1.25 DP so I think whichever one I get will be a pretty big jump from where I am now.

Any help appreciated, thanks.

I had a similar decisision to make when I got my dual core G5, and I ended up with the lowest model (the 2.0 Ghz), and I use it for pretty similar stuff to what you do (except replace music and video editing with high resolution photo editing). Basically, for 3.0 GHz versus 2.8 GHz, you're realistically not going to get more than a 7% speed increase, so it's probably not worth it. Can't really comment on the comparison to the older model, but in general new chips and faster architecture do make up for some difference in clock speed, as you say.
 
I enjoy you guy's insight a lot, thank a million!
My English is not perfect, I just wanted to make a point.
I think some of us should take a step back and think for a moment before responding to this "gaming yes/no" thing.
Who can say MacPro's are/aren't design for gaming? You or the creator of MacPro - Apple?
When Apple says it could ALSO be "The Ultimate Gamer", and you say "And that still doesn't change the fact that gaming is something that it's NOT designed for. It just happens to be pretty good at it?" (Used just as an example, sorry, I am not specially picking on someone.)
I don't understand.
What would you say if Apple take away DVD Player, will you scream? Or will you say "come on silly ... MacPro are not designed for watching movie ... go buy an Apple TV?"
Let gamers, who cares if they are pros or not, use their MacPro the way Apple ALSO intend it to be ... "The Ultimate Gamer".
When they ask for more from Apple, NOT US, why not let them?
Most of us here wanted more from Apple, don't we? More drive bay, more config optional, more expansion capability, more of everything ... right?
We are fans and friends, and this is a forum not a Hockey rink.
Peace.
 
...says the person who doesn't run their own computer company. Keep in mind whatever option they offer you now they have to be able to support/replace/repair for at least the next 3 years. It's suitable for them to offer some options, but not a ton (and certainly nothing that would necessitate different cooling or power options. I feel this go-around they did a pretty good job in their pics. As for being an all-around machine, the Mac Pro will never be one - this is a professional workstation and it thinks games are for kiddies... (if you have one just ask it!!!)

ps. I'm sure you're aware, but you can put whatever card in there you want - just don't run Mac OS...

Of course I'm aware that I can put whatever card I want in there... The problem is I would hate having to take the thing out every time I want to go back to OS X. It would not be a huge deal for Apple to offer a few more GPU options. Your argument is ridiculous, and anyone who isn't an obsessive fanboy can see that. There is nothing bad about having options, as consumers, to choose from. However, it's bad when we have too few options to choose from, which is where we are at right now.

I love Apple, and I currently have seven Apple computers on the go right now, the oldest being a Dual PowerMac G4. I live in Canada and have an iPhone and think it's the best phone I've ever had, but it's not perfect, and I have four iPods. I've had so many Apple products over the last decade that I don't even know where to begin listing them. However, I've not been taken over by this company into thinking that they are perfect; some people here seem to think that if Steve Jobs takes a crap it's worth more than gold.

These new Mac Pros are awesome machines. However, they are lacking in the graphics department yet again, and are alienating their customers who both like to work and play, or just play. Again, if you read my previous post I said that even though the Mac Pro is a work station it is still similarly priced to comparable computers on the market, all of which offer better GPU options than Apple. There is no really good reason why Apple can't at least offer an 8800 GTX or Ultra. Sure those cards won't be top of the line in the next few months, but they are still a hell of a lot better than what's being offered now, and we all know that Apple has no trouble offering out-of-date GPU's several years down the road at full prices.
 
Ehh, I dont see what the problem is...

Anyone who is going to use their MacPro for a gaming machine, will use bootcamp and play the games under Windows.

If you install a 8800 GTX (or the like) into your MacPro, it won't read on the MacOS but again, but it will read under Windows (from what I understand).
So you can have a good GPU for the Windows partition and a good GPU for the Mac partition.

What's the problem?
 
yep

You should cut back on the caffeine dude. I think you're going to feel silly when you realize that what you wrote is all wrong.

well everything about the penryn but the updates on technology no way, thats all correct, everyone knows that.:D
 
I was just looking at the ADC stuff, and if a person was a student (legit), they could get it for only $99 and then get access to this great discount couldn't they?
 
Gtx

Ehh, I dont see what the problem is...

Anyone who is going to use their MacPro for a gaming machine, will use bootcamp and play the games under Windows.

If you install a 8800 GTX (or the like) into your MacPro, it won't read on the MacOS but again, but it will read under Windows (from what I understand).
So you can have a good GPU for the Windows partition and a good GPU for the Mac partition.

What's the problem?


really??? that's possible?! ... please more info :p
I need this machine to replace my work-win-box but if it plays crysis&co even better :D
 
lol @ apple's graphic design people, notice in the graphic below the 7300gt is represented by an ATI card...
 

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For a high end desktop I see no reason why Apple shouldn't offer a good range of GPU's. Unless it's down to drivers - they seem to be struggling a bit with getting bugs sorted out so perhaps offering too many GPU's might make that situation worse. I'm sure that the kind of GPU's gamers want would also suit graphics professionals, or (shock!) people who buy their Mac for both.

As for the case - I'm happy that Apple haven't changed the case design. I'm replacing my 2.3 dual G5 with the Mac Pro 2.8GHz 8-core and I'll be very pleased to have the internal improvements such as 4 hard drive slots, 2 optical drive bays etc. I was worried that they might come up with a redesign and make the case smaller at the expense of expandability.

Mind you - I think Apple need to be careful not to keep this case design for too long. I'm sure many people felt the same 'why fix it if it ain't broke' attitude towards beige boxes in the 90's until Apple kicked the industry into shape. The current design is going to look dated eventually.
 
I would not rely on the CS 3 update.

Adobes 18 month product cycle has been running for who-knows-how long and I personally dont believe that changing for the foreseable future. So expected CS 4 is about 12 months away.Apparently the whole code has to be rewritten,and there is speculation if even the CS4 will alleviate the multithreading issues.So it may take up to 40 months until the CS are sorted for proper multithreading.

But,some kind of Leopard update,yes,hopefully! The whole suite is in quite sad shape at the moment..
What problems are Adobe CS3 apps having under Leopard? Is Photoshop affected?
 
I've ordered a brand new, truly basic 2.66 4 core MacPro online for $1,995 on Dec 29, 2007. I think it's a good deal although I knew something is coming out very shortly. But I HAD TO buy it because the company needed to spend some money before the end of the year for tax reasons. So I hold on until the last minute ...
Yesterday when it arrived at my doorstep it was an iMac 24 extreme. So I talked to the supplier about the error and he wanted me to think about the new 8 core and call him back again. I am lucky.
And I need some help from you guys.
What I have now: a 10 day new 15" MBP 2.4. Samsung 24" display. 2x500G hardware RAID 0 = 1T SATA external (let time machine do backup here). 2x500G=1T software RAID 0 SATA II internal. 4G 677Mhz RAM ordered from OWC.
Money: I paid $2,000 for the 2.66 4 core already, can afford $300 more if needed.
Application: Final Cut Pro 6, a lot of Color and Motion and multi stream editing. Will use Shake later. Use CS2 Sometimes.

Question#1:
I used my friends's MacPro 2.66 (1Gb RAM/7300) before. I'd noticed that FCP only use about 320% CPU (total is 400%) when rendering to QT. And also, when making DVD using iDVD, it's only using about 190% CPU power. I would like to see all core working (100%x4=400%). Anything wrong here? How can I increase CPU usage?

Question#2:
Graphic card. 7300GT is very basic. HD2600 should be better, but how much faster is 8800GT over X1900 when using Color and Motion?

My idea is
A: To order a new 2.8 4 core MacPro, live with HD2600 for now and then order 8800 later. I may pay $300 more but more RAM, a little bit faster and Bluetooth for free.
Or B:
Order the same 2.66 4 core to save a few hundred now and buy X1900 ($399 on Apple's web site). In this case I can drive 4 displays (using 4 XGA video projector to project 1080 image on a 16' X 9' sreen) and it's still a decent machine.
Any wise words?
 
What problems are Adobe CS3 apps having under Leopard? Is Photoshop affected?

Poor threading.

Cant speak that much of indesign or illustrator,but current PS scales very poorly for multiple cores. Many,if not most filters/actions get around 100-130% cpu useage. It ranges from saving .TIFFs to LZW/ZIPs, to lens blur to crop etc... Just very,very basic tasks perform like *****.

Very useable,no probs but it just feels silly to watch some lens blur to perform for 40 seconds when it could over in 10s if the application would use all my processors...



Edit: It performs "poorly" under both Tiger and Leopard, but leopard has additional problems of poorly functioning or utterly unfunctional input boxes.
Ie.you can not apply any values to crop tool (width,height,px pr inch etc..) because the boxes dont work!!! So it practically can render the whole program un-usable in certain enviroments.
 
I see all the complaints about no blu-ray.

Isn't it software that has to be updated only? Aren't current blu-ray drives available? Can't you already buy and burn to one with toast? If this is the case, the only thing apple is missing is the software to play from a blu-ray disc. I'd imagine you could still read the disc if you had the drive.

I can understand that apple wouldn't offer the option yet. Even if it seems that blu-ray has beaten HDdvd, it's been pretty up in the air till now. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the announcement was still made at MWSF that blu-ray will be an option (even on the updated mac pro) made possible by software updates to Leopard and QT/iTunes. On the other hand, with the prices for the drives the way they are ($500 plus), I'd think that "most" buyers wouldn't opt for it at this point anyhow.

The rumor I'd like to see happen (as if anyone cares) is a union between the appletv and the mini... 3 flavors, the smallest at nearly the same price point as the current appletv, and the "big dog" at the current hi-end mini point. Both being sold as a family-room computer but both capable of playing dvds out to a tv and also able to act as an appletv.

J
 
It would not be a huge deal for Apple to offer a few more GPU options.

That's your problem right there. Yes, it would - exponentially. It would be a huge deal in everything from power, thermals, & noise to pricing, support, & repair/replacement.

People would want ATI & NVIDIA low end/midrange/high end, then they'd want sli/crossfire for each, then they'd want quad-sli/crossfire for each. And of course Apple would have to devote much more time to driver support with ATI/NVIDIA (and then people would complain about the delays in driver updates), not to mention the afore-mentioned thermals & power. Standard pricing would surely be affected.

Where would it end?
 
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