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octo Mac Pro, 32 GB of RAM, etc. -- advice?

CanadaRAM said:
...just serves to further enhance the mad scientist rep...

Also, when choosing video cards, think of heat and noise, as well as cost and slots. Might 2 ATIs be cooler than 4 Nvideas? I don;t know, have never had the privilege of having to try them... :)
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Many people are suggesting this possibility, so let's go down this road for a minute. Originally, I was planning on 4 GeForce cards since I don't need fast graphics.

My main concern with 2 ATI X1900 XT cards is the issue of overheating. Am I going to fry or bake my machine with two of these cards? Lots of the reviews of this card on the Apple Store are complaining about the issue of overheating.

If the temperature won't get too high in the Mac Pro with two of these cards, then it seems like something reasonable to try: 2 ATI cards instead of 4 GeForce cards.

So, does anybody have 2 of these ATI X1900 XT cards installed on a Mac Pro? Did your Mac Pro melt? (Just kidding!) Seriously, does the temperature inside get as high as the folks who reviewed the card on the Apple Store say it does?
 
if you're looking to save costs..consider other 30" monitors. ACDs are notoriously expensive and you're not doing photography so color accuracy isn't much of a concern.
 
If your storage requirements do not require massive storage consider all Raptor drives. Hard drives are the slowest part of a system, it's odd that it's so ignored in terms of performance.
 
Whoa! I vote for pics too!

I really want to know if 4GB sticks work, 'cause that would be awesome!

You should:
Consider Dell 30" display's because they are cheaper.
Then, with the $$$ you save buy 2 X1900s.
Also, I agree that if you are going for performance, not storage, get 4 Raptor 10k drives. You can always get some external storage for backups.
 
killr_b said:
Whoa! I vote for pics too!

I really want to know if 4GB sticks work, 'cause that would be awesome!

You should:
Consider Dell 30" display's because they are cheaper.
Then, with the $$$ you save buy 2 X1900s.
Also, I agree that if you are going for performance, not storage, get 4 Raptor 10k drives. You can always get some external storage for backups.
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I'll definitely post the pictures later this summer, when the purchase is made. It takes awhile to get such things done, but I'll post the pictures when we get the machine. Thank you for your advice about the Dell displays and Raptor drives--I'll take a look.
 
keyboard, etc.

By the way, now I'm focusing attention on some other things about the machine, like the keyboard, mouse, printer, etc., etc.

I type a ton on my machine (I'm writing a graduate book in my "spare time"), so the keyboard is crucial to me. I noticed that the Matias Tactile Pro keyboard was generally well-liked by many folks on Macrumors, so I plan to buy the new Tactile Pro 2.0 keyboard when it is released:

http://matias.ca/tactilepro2/index.php

Now I'm taking a look around for a good mouse, printer, etc.....
 
mward333 said:
About the good suggestion for two 40-inch Samsung LCD's:

I contemplated buying one 60-inch TV (with one powerful, upgraded graphics card) instead of four 30-inch Apple displays (with the humble GeForce graphics cards). Hmmm... I would appreciate testimonies/experience about this.

Since the screen dimension is measured on the diagonal, then one 60-inch TV would have the same physical space as four 30-inch TV's (although the pixel counts could be different, of course).

Has anybody used a 60-inch TV for their Mac? For instance, I noticed that the Pioneer 60 inch Plasma HDTV's (PDP-6070HD and PRO-1540HD) do NOT have DVI inputs, so a converter would be needed to transform the DVI signal. I think that the Pioneed elite 60 inch monitor (PRO-FHD1, which is a monitor, not just an HDTV) DOES have a DVI input, so this would be a solution, although a very expensive solution.

One advantage of having four 30-inch Apple displays (instead of one 60-inch display) is that you could angle them in a V-shape, in a square shape. I would have them in a square, two monitors across and two monitors tall, and I could sit in the middle. This way, looking to the left, I would see two monitors (one on top of the other), and looking to the right I would see the other two monitors (one on top of the other).

That was my thinking. I'm happy to hear other folks' experiences/ideas/suggestions. I always appreciate the variety of opinions in our Macrumors community.
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Get the 4 screens - although the TV's are bigger, they offer less screen real estate, so in viewing area, are actually smaller
 
LastLine said:
Get the 4 screens - although the TV's are bigger, they offer less screen real estate, so in viewing area, are actually smaller
Click to expand...

After looking into this (and hearing from several Macrumors users), I realized that you are completely right! I agree with you. I'm definitely NOT going to buy a 60 inch display.

In fact, my wife suggested three displays on my desk in a row, instead of four displays in a square (wall-mounted) fashion. Hmmm.... she usually has good ideas, so maybe I should listen to her suggestion.

She says that, with four displays in a square (mounted on the wall), I will be looking up-and-down too much.

She said that three displays in a row on my desk might be preferable, although of course I'll have to move my chair from time-to-time, when I want to switch from the leftmost display to the rightmost display.
 
mward333 said:
After looking into this (and hearing from several Macrumors users), I realized that you are completely right! I agree with you. I'm definitely NOT going to buy a 60 inch display.

In fact, my wife suggested three displays on my desk in a row, instead of four displays in a square (wall-mounted) fashion. Hmmm.... she usually has good ideas, so maybe I should listen to her suggestion.

She says that, with four displays in a square (mounted on the wall), I will be looking up-and-down too much.

She said that three displays in a row on my desk might be preferable, although of course I'll have to move my chair from time-to-time, when I want to switch from the leftmost display to the rightmost display.
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Why spend so much money on a system you haven't even tested? If you're using grant money, you can likely use the money better for other purposes. I would start with two screens at most. You've never even used the 30", let alone 2 30". You should seek to meet your needs, not your wants. IMHO.
 
mward333 said:
She said that three displays in a row on my desk might be preferable, although of course I'll have to move my chair from time-to-time, when I want to switch from the leftmost display to the rightmost display.
Click to expand...

How about 3 in a gentle horseshoe curve infront of you, that way you can sit infront of them all and type where ever... desk size permitting.
 
Or get a desk with a curve in it, budget permitting of course. You could maybe even buy a chair with wheels on it, if there's £20 left over.


ps I'm totally jelous of you...
 
hayduke said:
Why spend so much money on a system you haven't even tested? If you're using grant money, you can likely use the money better for other purposes. I would start with two screens at most. You've never even used the 30", let alone 2 30". You should seek to meet your needs, not your wants. IMHO.
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Hmmm.... I don't see why you are claiming that I've never even used the 30" display.

Actually, I have used the 30" Apple displays many times, and I even have two displays on my desk right now. I'm pretty familiar with such setups.... like I said, they tend to be pretty common at the university.

I've never had three of my own displays in a row, but I have had two displays in a row for years, and I have colleagues with three large displays in a row, and it works wonderfully.
 
Willis said:
How about 3 in a gentle horseshoe curve infront of you, that way you can sit infront of them all and type where ever... desk size permitting.
Click to expand...

That's exactly what I'm thinking! Thank you for the "gentle horseshoe" notation. I was trying to picture a way to describe this easily online.

I do plan to have a horse-shaped desk (I have one of these at home already), with one display on each of the three portions of the desk.
 
Jebaloo said:
Or get a desk with a curve in it, budget permitting of course. You could maybe even buy a chair with wheels on it, if there's £20 left over.


ps I'm totally jelous of you...
Click to expand...

Yes, a chair with wheels is necessary. I already use one of these, and I don't know what I would do without it. Besides, people are constantly coming in/out of the office, so a chair with wheels makes it easy to move around your office for a variety of purposes.

In fact, I currently use two desks in my office, easy with a computer and a separate workspace (one desk for writing my book and the other desk for computing).
 
Just to bring up the video card point. Since some researchers are using video cards to speed up physics computations, would it be possible to use these cards for your calculations as well, assuming software was written to take advantage of them? If so this could be another point in favor of dual x1900's.
 
velocityg4 said:
Just to bring up the video card point. Since some researchers are using video cards to speed up physics computations, would it be possible to use these cards for your calculations as well, assuming software was written to take advantage of them? If so this could be another point in favor of dual x1900's.
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I appreciate the suggestion. Unfortunately, none of my computations are graphics-based. I just do symbolic computations with Maple, which are usually very RAM-intensive and time-intensive too. No graphics computations here.

Nonetheless, many people on this forum are suggesting the x1900 cards, so I will probably end up going with these.
 
Wow, I'm blown away by this thread. Mward333, it sounds like you've it planned out perfectly. The 4x 30" screens would *definitely* be a big advantage to anyone running scientific computations. I 'only' have one 30" screen and while I'm very glad that I scraped the pennies to get it, I do often wish I had another one when I'm doing certain stuff like coding. Obviously my code is way below the level of things that you'll be doing, being only a final year student, but I can still at least see where you're coming from!

May I ask which University and what you're specifically researching at the moment? I'm very interested in computational physics... maybe because of the allure of research grants for machines like this!! They should probably put that down as another 'bad reason for wanting to do a PhD'!
 
32 G ?

Isn't a 2G stick something like $250? So you could get 16 sticks for $4000, and get a second 8-core Mac Pro, and end up cheaper. Can the extra memory in a single machine possibly make it twice as fast -- at that level? It certainly can in a small machine, but with 8 G you'd think it wouldn't. And with the second machine chugging away on a problem for a day or so, you could use the first machine, with its 3 or 4 screens, to design the next problem or write a book without getting in the way of the computing.
 
observer said:
Isn't a 2G stick something like $250? So you could get 16 sticks for $4000, and get a second 8-core Mac Pro, and end up cheaper. Can the extra memory in a single machine possibly make it twice as fast -- at that level? It certainly can in a small machine, but with 8 G you'd think it wouldn't. And with the second machine chugging away on a problem for a day or so, you could use the first machine, with its 3 or 4 screens, to design the next problem or write a book without getting in the way of the computing.
Click to expand...

I've certainly thought about doing exactly what you suggested. It's an interesting idea.

I'll be making the purchase this summer, so let's see if the price of 4 GB sticks of RAM drops any. If not, this might be a good alternative. I've definitely considered going this route. Hmmmm......
 
mward333 said:
By the way, now I'm focusing attention on some other things about the machine, like the keyboard, mouse, printer, etc., etc.

I type a ton on my machine (I'm writing a graduate book in my "spare time"), so the keyboard is crucial to me. I noticed that the Matias Tactile Pro keyboard was generally well-liked by many folks on Macrumors, so I plan to buy the new Tactile Pro 2.0 keyboard when it is released:

http://matias.ca/tactilepro2/index.php

Now I'm taking a look around for a good mouse, printer, etc.....
Click to expand...

FYI I bought a Matias, I've gone through 6 pairs of kickstands and the shell holding the keyboard together started to come apart. It's an odd combo, the keys and innards are great, but the outer components were made with very poor durability.
 
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