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Mac Pro Good Enough for What I Do?
- Thread starter theapplefreak
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tru dat! also a decent video card helps. Ive been testing Maya on an old MacPro 2,1 3GHz Quad along with Quadro FX4500. Makes a big diff with video cards. As far as FC Studio 2, that would be fine with any card really.
Here's my opinion:
Go for the Quad with an upgraded graphics card. As more and more app developers support Open CL, a good graphics card will be your most cost effective performance boost. The things that Open CL will really excell with are going to be exactly what you're going to be doing (video editing/transcoding and bitmap pixel pushing. As Photoshop and Final Cut Studio are updated to off load to the GPU you may not notice the lack of 4 extra cores that much.
Also, the poster that suggested buying a new computer in 3 years is really on to something. Macs really hold their value pretty well compared to other computers. Try looking on ebay at 1st gen Mac Pros (3 years old) to see what I mean. If you take good care of your machine and sell it before it become ancient can really offset the price of a new one. If you really think about it, this may be more cost effective then running the same machine until its worthless(6years) and than buying a new one.
Also, you're obviously concerned with cost but whatever you do, do not skimp on Apple Care. I don't know if you've see what a logic board or replacement Xeon costs but its well worth the gamble to get apple care.
Sorry if these things have already been mentioned, I didn't have time to read every post. Hope this helps
Go for the Quad with an upgraded graphics card. As more and more app developers support Open CL, a good graphics card will be your most cost effective performance boost. The things that Open CL will really excell with are going to be exactly what you're going to be doing (video editing/transcoding and bitmap pixel pushing. As Photoshop and Final Cut Studio are updated to off load to the GPU you may not notice the lack of 4 extra cores that much.
Also, the poster that suggested buying a new computer in 3 years is really on to something. Macs really hold their value pretty well compared to other computers. Try looking on ebay at 1st gen Mac Pros (3 years old) to see what I mean. If you take good care of your machine and sell it before it become ancient can really offset the price of a new one. If you really think about it, this may be more cost effective then running the same machine until its worthless(6years) and than buying a new one.
Also, you're obviously concerned with cost but whatever you do, do not skimp on Apple Care. I don't know if you've see what a logic board or replacement Xeon costs but its well worth the gamble to get apple care.
Sorry if these things have already been mentioned, I didn't have time to read every post. Hope this helps
If you need one now, I would buy now. The 2.66 Quad should be fast enough for the task you listed.
Otherwise if you can wait a month, wait on the benchmarks when Snow Leopard is released to see if the Octo is considerably faster then the Quad.
I think it's confirmed that the model will be the 2.66 GHz. I went to the Apple Store today and tried it out. It was perfect and the speed was incredible for me. I have a 3 year old Macbook (The First Generation from 2006), so it's a huge leap.
Thanks
Thanks
If all you can afford is the Quad then I think you should get a Quad 
An 8-core will cost you so much more right now that you'd be better off financially and performance-wise to buy a Quad today and upgrade in 3-4 years to whatever is the cheapest or middle of the road at that time. I will guarantee that what you find in 3-4 years will be much, much faster than an 8-core you buy today -- and for less cost overall.
An 8-core will cost you so much more right now that you'd be better off financially and performance-wise to buy a Quad today and upgrade in 3-4 years to whatever is the cheapest or middle of the road at that time. I will guarantee that what you find in 3-4 years will be much, much faster than an 8-core you buy today -- and for less cost overall.
The issues I've been having, and I stumbled across some posts here in the forum. (My system kept going into short "freeze ups", really choppy behavior. When I disabled HT, it ceased completely).
It's a guess, but the HT code was written for a P4, and the new architecture is a little different, and seems to have an interaction issue. At least for some, so I'd think that's either the board (firmware), or perhaps the software was just poorly written. Not like either situation is unheard of.