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Mac Pro (Early 2008) Notes and Options

ehurtley said:
Sorry, the pedant in me has to complain. 'Option' implies a choice. (Indeed, the OS X Dictionary defines it as "a thing that is or may be chosen".) As it is no longer a 'choice', the proper wording would be "- Bluetooth is now standard"
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Grimace said the same thing as you half an hour earlier - doesn't the pedant in you have any aversion to redundant comments? :p

Freis968 said:
I am puzzled why they did not include the Airport as well. In this day and age it should be standard. It is a $20 config, so why the hell make you buy that seperate. Pretty dumb in my opinion.
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I'm not sure how popular Mac pro is as a wireless machine. I can see it more likely being part of a wired network than a wireless one. I bet there are lots of orders that don't use Airport and so the price is kept down (imagine, for instance, a small studio buying 10 Mac Pros in a wired network - saving of $500 just by not including Airport)
 
scottrichardson said:
from the apple australia web store, more info section for the available graphics card options:



Appears unfinished... is this a spoiler for a card yet to be officially added to the store? Is this card more powerful than the GT?

Scottie
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Wow! Great catch!

I personally like the "This PCI Express 2.0 graphics card provides up to XX performance claim." under the (acknowledged) Radeon 2600 XT. (emphasis mine.)
 
>ATI Radeon HD 3870

This would be so sweet. It'd be nice to have a choice between high end Nvidia and high end ATI on the Mac Pro without having to pay a fortune for the Quadro card which most people don't need.

Historically ATI cards have been more stable under OS X than Nvidia, so if I were buying a new Mac Pro today and the 3870 were available, I'd probably go with it.
 
If you chose the 2.8ghz option to save the $500.00 for the 8 core, which I have thought about doing to save money, what do you think? Is it worth the extra $500 that I would have to "scrape" up to afford or can you upgrade down the road later when the funds were more readily available.

Also, what Apps can utilize the 8 core at this very second? Logic Pro 8? Aperture, Final Cut Express? Are these going to be able to take advantage of the 8 core setup or is it just overkill at this very moment?
 
Freis968 said:
If you chose the 2.8ghz option to save the $500.00 for the 8 core, which I have thought about doing to save money, what do you think? Is it worth the extra $500 that I would have to "scrape" up to afford or can you upgrade down the road later when the funds were more readily available.

Also, what Apps can utilize the 8 core at this very second? Logic Pro 8? Aperture, Final Cut Express? Are these going to be able to take advantage of the 8 core setup or is it just overkill at this very moment?
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I'd say it's still overkill right now, BUT multicore is the way the industry is moving, so I'm sure we'll start seeing more apps written to take advantage of it soon enough.
 
Just an fyi getting the cpu's in to MP is tough

i built a quad core 1.5 years ago, getting to them was henious, and if apple doesn'tinclude their custom heat sinks your boned.. so go dually 8 core they rock
 
The new Mac Pro has TWO X16 slots :
 

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RealMcCoy said:
Today I was out and about to get me an iPhone (in Germany that is) ... to my surprise ... the guy (who was obviously in charge of the store) I was questioning about some details I needed to know before I change providers ... responded to my comment that I would normaly have waited for the iPhone 2 (or whatever the name will be of the next generation model), that this would be still something like 6 months away ... as it turns out ... he was talking about Germany ... because his words were "well, for the new model they will show next week in the us, you will need to wait at least 6 more month to be released in Germany. The new one they gonna show on tuesday is only for the us for now ..."

I wonder if this guy was talking too much, knew too much ... or is just about right with it ! We will see next tuesday !!!
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He probably just reads MacRumors!
 
jnc said:
Grimace said the same thing as you half an hour earlier - doesn't the pedant in you have any aversion to redundant comments? :p
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Yes, but I was a little too lazy to read each and every prior comment. I read a bunch, but must have missed that one.

Oops. :D
 
i was waiting for this but now my specification Mac pro costs £3809 (~$7000)

3.2Ghz 8Cores
2GB RAM standard
nVidia 8800GT
300GB SAS Drives
RAID Card for the SAS drives
and the rest is the same

the whole thing costs £3809... ;)

and one more thing Apple included the 8800 GT(why not the GTX) does this means that more games are coming to the mac platform.
 
revjay said:
He probably just reads MacRumors!
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I know from people who work at Apple Stores, that even the managers don't find out about new products until they are announced publicly. They sometimes get boxes delivered with "do not open until 9:00 AM" type things, that until they are allowed to open it, have no idea what's inside.

Heck, I was the one who told the manager of my local Apple Store about the $200 price drop on the morning it was announced, and I was coming in just as a customer! (One of the other employees had just read about it on Ars Technica, and mentioned it to the manager right after I mentioned it. The manager had to go check his email for official confirmation!)
 
jnc said:
Grimace said the same thing as you half an hour earlier - doesn't the pedant in you have any aversion to redundant comments? :p



I'm not sure how popular Mac pro is as a wireless machine. I can see it more likely being part of a wired network than a wireless one. I bet there are lots of orders that don't use Airport and so the price is kept down (imagine, for instance, a small studio buying 10 Mac Pros in a wired network - saving of $500 just by not including Airport)
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The Mac Pro is PERFECT for me as a wireless machine because my damn cable outlet is about 30 ft away from my computer at the moment. Not everyone's computer is or can be put right next to the cable plug so instead of having a 30' ethernet cable the wireless option works for me. Besides, don't you notice that when you remove things in the CONFIGURE NOW screen it takes money off of the price? That small studio [I don't see how you consider a small studio that afford 10 Mac Pros small by the way] could simply remove the airport card and save his/her $50 per Mac Pro. It just seems silly to make Bluetooth Standard and not wireless. Every cotton picking Mac or PC mag I see in the store has HOW TO WIFI articles in it, each month consistently.
 
I don't know if this has already been said - it probably has. I also don't know if this is related, but here it goes.

I think the release of the Mac Pro now means something big at Macworld. If they're releasing it early, then they must have something big they want to release in a week. If they had nothing big to bring to us next week, then I'm sure the new 8 core Mac Pro would've been released then. It makes perfect marketing sense.

Once again, so sorry if this has been said already. I just felt like I had to get it out.
 
ajagor92 said:
I don't know if this has already been said - it probably has. I also don't know if this is related, but here it goes.

I think the release of the Mac Pro now means something big at Macworld. If they're releasing it early, then they must have something big they want to release in a week. If they had nothing big to bring to us next week, then I'm sure the new 8 core Mac Pro would've been released then. It makes perfect marketing sense.

Once again, so sorry if this has been said already. I just felt like I had to get it out.
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I think you, and others, are justified in speculating this. Though it may be nothing more impressive than consumer products that are already rumoured that they want to spend time talking about and take advantage of that valuble time when the world is watching Steve Jobs.
 
Freis968 said:
If you chose the 2.8ghz option to save the $500.00 for the 8 core, which I have thought about doing to save money, what do you think? Is it worth the extra $500 that I would have to "scrape" up to afford or can you upgrade down the road later when the funds were more readily available.

Also, what Apps can utilize the 8 core at this very second? Logic Pro 8? Aperture, Final Cut Express? Are these going to be able to take advantage of the 8 core setup or is it just overkill at this very moment?
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Hi Freis968. I'm not sure if this helps, but the following is an earlier post I saw that mentioned something that might be a good idea.

twitch said:
Ordered mine today.... pretty darn pumped really....

I've been waiting for this machine for quite a while, as a workstation for my recording studio, and the update suits me fine really.... All i really wanted was some current horsepower for the price, and its certainly there. Twice the cores at a faster speed, twice the ram, and more HD for just a tiny bit more than the old base model....

Here's a hint for anyone considering a purchase -

An Apple Developer Connection "Select" membership will cost you $500, and will give you a 'one-time select member hardware discount'. The discount you get with it will save you at least $500 on a base mac pro, and even more on a tricked out one. After upping my hard disks and adding a wireless mouse and keyboard my 'select' price in canadian dollars wasn't even back up to the retail base price..... Basically if you were going to order retail anyway you'll be getting the select membership for free, or even saving a bit of money. The membership has some perks for attending events, and access to lots of extra downloads, including developer use full versions of the client and server versions of tiger and leopard.... Lots of other goodies too....

Food for thought....

-N
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Regarding the BT/Airport issue:
iirc
there has been some talk on these boards in the past about certain companies and governmental agencies that block wireless transmission and do not allow certain wireless options in their computers. Apparently, this is no longer a concern for apple re:BT but it might still be re:Airport?

:apple::confused::apple:
 
Freis968 said:
The Mac Pro is PERFECT for me as a wireless machine because my damn cable outlet is about 30 ft away from my computer at the moment. Not everyone's computer is or can be put right next to the cable plug so instead of having a 30' ethernet cable the wireless option works for me. Besides, don't you notice that when you remove things in the CONFIGURE NOW screen it takes money off of the price? That small studio [I don't see how you consider a small studio that afford 10 Mac Pros small by the way] could simply remove the airport card and save his/her $50 per Mac Pro. It just seems silly to make Bluetooth Standard and not wireless. Every cotton picking Mac or PC mag I see in the store has HOW TO WIFI articles in it, each month consistently.
Click to expand...

Shrug. Not much difference between an option to add and an option to subtract. But most things are options to add, probably because it lets them keep the base price (the one they advertise) lower. And they probably figure that more people are going to be using it wired than not (for one thing, if you're actually doing significant local network traffic, it's going to be a lot faster over ethernet). And you'll notice that you can't subtract Bluetooth, whereas wi-fi is actually an option. Honestly, I'm really not sure why you're complaining about having to click a radio button.
 
Drumjim85 said:
I hope so too!
it's the only mid range option right now, which kinda sucks... you can't change anything on the imac other than the ram ... what if you have a need for a PCI-X card or something ... i want to add a second internal hard drive ....
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I love to swap or change out hardware like the rest of you; Probably why one of my first Mac's was a PowerMac, but I am a total convert to the iMac after I gave the 24" a shot.

It is what it is, an all in one machine that performs and functions perfect for what it was designed for.

If people need to add to the baseline hardware of a top end iMac, then they naturally shouldn't be in the mid-range market.

So ultimately, it isn't the iMac's problem, its just the user is trying to use it for something it was never intended for.

iMac preaching complete.
 
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