New Mac Pro Dual 2.8GHz or Old Mac Pro Dual 3.0 GHz

[Brian Puccio]

So I'm selling my MacBook Pro and I was going to get a new Mac Pro Dual 2.8 GHz desktop to replace it mainly because I no longer need a laptop and after playing with the Mac Pro's in the Apple store last week, I'd really love to have the power of a desktop again, especially since I'm using Aperture a lot these days and doing a fair bit of video encoding (bash scripts that use ffmpeg).

Would I be better off getting a new dual 2.8 GHz model with the base video card and then upgrading to the 8800 when I have more money or should I find a used dual 3.0 GHz model on eBay and then add a 8800 to that when I have more money? Either way, I'd have an 8-core machine and in the end both would have an 8800 GPU, would there be much of a performance difference that would justify buying the newer model?

Thanks!

 

[netnothing]

So I'm selling my MacBook Pro and I was going to get a new Mac Pro Dual 2.8 GHz desktop to replace it mainly because I no longer need a laptop and after playing with the Mac Pro's in the Apple store last week, I'd really love to have the power of a desktop again, especially since I'm using Aperture a lot these days and doing a fair bit of video encoding (bash scripts that use ffmpeg).

Would I be better off getting a new dual 2.8 GHz model with the base video card and then upgrading to the 8800 when I have more money or should I find a used dual 3.0 GHz model on eBay and then add a 8800 to that when I have more money? Either way, I'd have an 8-core machine and in the end both would have an 8800 GPU, would there be much of a performance difference that would justify buying the newer model?

Thanks!

Look at some of the threads in the Mac Pro forum. So far the consensus is that the new 8800 is NOT compatible with the older Mac Pros.

-Kevin