Spec me a Mac Pro

[smogsy]

will be buying a Mac Pro soonish, im debating on what specs to go with, so i thought you could help me out.

Budget £5000 max. would like it cheaper though.

Uses:
Photoshop CS3
Dreamweaver CS3
Aperture 2 (3000+ images in RAW)
Itunes
Adium
Flash CS3
some gaming (probably Crossover games)
Xcode

Current Equipment
Samsung 30" & 24" HP LP2475w
i already have wireless key/mouse (apple)

spec me a mac pro

 

[vendettabass]

I believe the Adobe apps aren't multicore yet, so I'd go with the One 2.93GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon, with 6GB RAM, HD 4870.

(thats £2,579.00).

Add some HDD's and Intel's new SSD as a boot drive. Perfect!

 

[Genghis Khan]

For 5,000 pounds you can buy the ultimate Mac Pro surely?

but yeah, vendetta bass has it right

 

[surflordca]

I believe the Adobe apps aren't multicore yet, so I'd go with the One 2.93GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon, with 6GB RAM, HD 4870.

(thats £2,579.00).

Add some HDD's and Intel's new SSD as a boot drive. Perfect!

Adobe apps aren't multicore but he will kick himself if Adobe starts supporting that and he wants to up grade his software to take advantage of it. Multicore as in 2x 2.26 is more future proof but if he doesn't see himself ever spending the money to upgrade his software than I would agree with you...

 

[Umbongo]

For 5,000 pounds you can buy the ultimate Mac Pro surely?

Not even close. Octo 2.93GHz is £4,600 new. £3,999 refurb.

The refurb 2.66GHz (£3,099) and refurb 2008 3.2GHz (£2,499) systems are two of the best choices if processing power and cores are important. You can save £150 and £250 on the quad core refurbs.

 

[Genghis Khan]

For 5,000 pounds you can buy the ultimate Mac Pro surely?

Not even close. Octo 2.93GHz is £4,600 new. £3,999 refurb.

True, but even without the refurb, he has the displays already...so chuck in a 4870 and buy 6/12GB RAM.
However, you have to admit, £5,000 is not a very limiting budget when buying a Mac Pro.........

Adobe apps aren't multicore but he will kick himself if Adobe starts supporting that

The base Mac Pro has 4 cores (or 8 virtual cores if you wish). That's still a hell of a machine for Photoshop if it ever gets multi-core enabled.

 

[Umbongo]

True, but even without the refurb, he has the displays already...so chuck in a 4870 and buy 6/12GB RAM.
However, you have to admit, £5,000 is not a very limiting budget when buying a Mac Pro.........

Right, but its not ultimate is it

24GB/32GB and SSDs are.

 

[sbb155]

an older dual core machine is just fine for photoshop... it will be MUCH faster than current macs if you do the following:
old mac (2.66 dual - $1500) + SSD ($400) is much faster than a new bottom line mac pro for photoshop. Especially when loaded with RAM

I love how on the mac pro forum, we state that the bottom end pros may not be good enough, but then on the macbook pro forum, fanboys state that the top end macbook pro is adequate for video, photo, etc.

The 2006 mac pro dual core 2.66 is faster than most if not all current laptop offerings....

Most MP horsepower is not used my most people except serious video editing in HD.

 

[nanofrog]

Personally, I like the idea of refurbs. The '06 models are decent, and will work. But if the OP wants a bit faster, going to an '08 will offer the higher FSB and FB-DIMM clock.

As mentioned, even the 3.2GHz '08 is inexpensive (2,499GBP as per Umbongo's post), especially when compared to the '09's. The higher clock will help with single threaded applications quite well, so in this sense, it's a better choice than an upgraded '06, and even the 2.26GHz & 2.66GHz '09 Octad (~equivalent with the 2.93Ghz models). To me, this gives a LOT of bang for the pound.

Given the software listed, it's also easier to implement an internal RAID, particularly if it's hardware based (SFF-8087 to 4x SATA fanout cable vs. traces on the logic board in the '09's). So it might be worth considering for this reason alone.