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The 2009 (Gainestown) Mac Pro: Everything We Know

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That first post is excellent. Thanks for the summation.

Pity about Blu-ray, and don't remind me of the 1.5 TB f'up. It distresses me. :p

If the higher definition TV comes out I suspect it will come out to the general public at the 2015 time range. We can't even get our broadcast of HDTV going smoothly in America. With a recession/depression, I suspect people are getting weary of all the techno-spaz as formats change too quickly and cost too much for too little benefit. Though computers might move up, I would bet on the majority of consumers being happy enough with 1080 through the teens.
 
BenRoethig said:
That would be suicide. Adapter most likely.
Click to expand...
I would rather have 8 2.5" drives than trying to fit 8 3.5" drives. Plus think of the cooling required for that many drives.

SSD's would just be icing on the cake. Although I am not sure about using them in a RAID configuration (with all the extra writing that occurs).
 
Tallest Skil said:
Well... 8 2.5" bays with the current size and six 3.5" bays if it is made longer.

A few days ago, I saw a Mac Pro in real life for the first time in a long time...

THE THING IS A FREAKING SQUARE. It's taller than it is deep, for crying out loud! Apple could EASILY do with extending it and going with something like my design from post #305...

I mean, come on. It's TINY!
Click to expand...

You didn't by chance have a look inside to understand what went into the design? One thing is to design the outer shell but another is to design the innards.

I love the industrial look of the current Mac Pro (which so happens to be on my desk at home and work).
 
Pressure said:
You didn't by chance have a look inside to understand what went into the design? One thing is to design the outer shell but another is to design the innards.

I love the industrial look of the current Mac Pro (which so happens to be on my desk at home and work).
Click to expand...

Just stretch it out backwards. At least one more drive bay, and heck, room for bigger graphics cards. Nothing else has to change.
 
jjahshik32 said:
How about instead of the current design (a rectangle) make it an oval with side handles?!
Click to expand...

So would the ODD bays be facing upward or downward? :D

Or a sphere, like this old design. Granted, it would need to be updated from the standard G4 look.

g5sphere.jpg
 
Does anyone here think it would be completely stupid to invest in a mac pro AND cinema display this week? Knowing that the new system/OS might not be out until maybe summer, AND that the software manufactures might not update their software upon this release.

Sorry if I'm beating a dead horse.. I'm stuck with no computer and when I buy this tower, it's going to cost me about as much as a mid-luxury car.

Cory, Owner
vogelhaus design
www.vogelha.us
 
vogelhausdesign said:
Does anyone here think it would be completely stupid to invest in a mac pro AND cinema display this week? Knowing that the new system/OS might not be out until maybe summer, AND that the software manufactures might not update their software upon this release.

Sorry if I'm beating a dead horse.. I'm stuck with no computer and when I buy this tower, it's going to cost me about as much as a mid-luxury car.

Cory, Owner
vogelhaus design
www.vogelha.us
Click to expand...

If you can wait until this summer then you absolutely should as the new Mac Pros will be released.

But if you need it for work and absolutely need it within the next couple to few months, I'd say just buy now.
 
jjahshik32 said:
If you can wait until this summer then you absolutely should as the new Mac Pros will be released.

But if you need it for work and absolutely need it within the next couple to few months, I'd say just buy now.
Click to expand...

Thats what I was thinking too..

It's for my business/design studio which does 3D/Motion/Animation/Interactive graphic design.. So to cover all my bases I've always invested about 12-17 thousand dollars into mac machines..

If it comes down to it.. How long do you think a Mac Pro ( current model )with 16gig ram and 4TB disk space with whatever the best graphics card I can find now ( that will work in the machine) will last until it can basically be replaced by a macbook pro with the new intel processors..

I guess what it comes down to , is will I be kicking myself ( again ) for buying a mid-late cycle mac.

Is this update going to completely worth waiting and potentially losing money in my business.

Does it have the potential to render faster ( how much faster? )

Will i see an improvement in a current model mac with snow leopard?

Cory, Owner
vogelhaus design
www.vogelha.us
 
Cory,

Do you need to get work done now that will pay you money? If you don't have the computer now will you lose income? If you answer yes to those questions, buy now.

When the new Mac Pro comes out, and you feel you need it, you can always upgrade while keeping your disks and monitors.

S-
 
sidewinder said:
Cory,

Do you need to get work done now that will pay you money? If you don't have the computer now will you lose income? If you answer yes to those questions, buy now.

When the new Mac Pro comes out, and you feel you need it, you can always upgrade while keeping your disks and monitors.

S-
Click to expand...

How much money do you think i'll lose during that transition? ( buying now, upgrading when the new ones are out and the bugs are worked out)

Thats what my concern is. PLUS , if they do update the cinema display and it turns out to have a better color spec than the current model, i'll need to update that too.. well maybe.

What's the resale like on a machine that is being replaced??


Cory, Owner
vogelhaus design
www.vogelha.us
 
My guess is that you would see something like 20%-30% more increase in overall speed and I guess a newer GPU would factor in as well.

But I dont see why you couldnt use the upcoming GPU in the current 8 core machines.

I think you should just pull the trigger and buy the current Mac Pros now and perhaps saving yourself a lot of money as to the nehalem Mac Pros which would cost more.

Especially as the economy is now buy the current Mac Pros and dont forget to buy RAM from www.transintl.com (my fav. place for Mac Pro RAM).

Basically I think if you buy the current Mac Pros you wont have to upgrade for another 2-3 years.
 
jjahshik32 said:
My guess is that you would see something like 20%-30% more increase in overall speed and I guess a newer GPU would factor in as well.

But I dont see why you couldnt use the upcoming GPU in the current 8 core machines.

I think you should just pull the trigger and buy the current Mac Pros now and perhaps saving yourself a lot of money as to the nehalem Mac Pros which would cost more.

Especially as the economy is now buy the Mac Pros and dont forget to buy RAM from www.transintl.com (my fav. place for Mac Pro RAMS).
Click to expand...

I'm fully prepared to spend over $30,000 on this computer if I have to.. ram and disk space are not my concern, i'll max those out from the factory without thinking about it. My concern is my work flow, render time ect..

AND INVESTMENT, is it a poor investment to buy now, upgrade later when I could potentially wait and buy a better computer.

I wish I could write this out as a mathematical theory, but I'm not that good.

this is purely from an investment standpoint, I'm trying to guess how much money I will LOSE if I buy now, sell, upgrade. the includes tower + cinema display. ( array x 4)

Is it possible to buy now, and just toss a new intel chip in a mac pro? just curious, how "upgradable" is the current model? obviously I would need a new logic / motherboard.. ( forgive me if that came out totally noob)

Cory, Owner
vogelhaus design
www.vogelha.us
 
vogelhausdesign said:
How much money do you think i'll lose during that transition? ( buying now, upgrading when the new ones are out and the bugs are worked out)

Thats what my concern is. PLUS , if they do update the cinema display and it turns out to have a better color spec than the current model, i'll need to update that too.. well maybe.

What's the resale like on a machine that is being replaced??


Cory, Owner
vogelhaus design
www.vogelha.us
Click to expand...

I don't know about you but the new mac pro being basically a redesign internally, I plan on waiting about 6 months after the release for the bugs to get worked out. I was going to wait too but decided to snag a refurb 2.8 for 400 bucks off original price. As for the cinema display, there are other monitors less expensive than apple that are just as good or better. I seen a 3.2 octo for 4000 on apples refurb site. You can always sell it later. Mac pro's hold there resale value pretty good. And with snow leopard being tweeked for multiprocessors, a 3.2 will scream. Good luck with your decision.
 
Cory,

You don't have to sell the whole setup. You can keep the displays and disks. Do you know you will need to upgrade right away?

Don't buy the Displays, RAM, and disks from the "factory". Do those aftermarket.

It penny wise and pound foolish to lose jobs now waiting to buy a system. Buy the system and move forward. Buy refurbished. That's what I did. My system looks brand new and I can buy AppleCare for it if I am worried about the hardware (which I am not).

S-
 
sidewinder said:
Cory,

You don't have to sell the whole setup. You can keep the displays and disks. Do you know you will need to upgrade right away?

Don't buy the Displays, RAM, and disks from the "factory". Do those aftermarket.

It penny wise and pound foolish to lose jobs now waiting to buy a system. Buy the system and move forward. Buy refurbished. That's what I did. My system looks brand new and I can buy AppleCare for it if I am worried about the hardware (which I am not).

S-
Click to expand...

Ok.. so if you were me lets plan this out. And again , thanks to all of your help guys, really.. I appreciate it. If any of you need any design work done I swear I'll discount the hell out of it. Just visit my site! Because this is really helping me get my computer situation in order ( sorry for stealing the attention of the thread !! )


OK SO:

If I buy now.. I can sell it for a good price later, my ration is their will be a few problems and maybe buying on release date is a bad idea anyways, so it may be about a year before that machine is stable enough for me to sink a large amount of money into.


As far as a monitor.. for as much as I know about everything in the world.. lol I know not about monitors.. I use my cintiq for color matching so i've never really needed a "graphic design" monitor.
What can I get thats better than a 30" Cinema Display? for the same or less..

What graphic card should I get, if I decide to go with the current system? ( Price doesnt matter, but I may need 2 or more so..)

Is 8gigs of ram going to last me a while?

What can I do to improve the current system that will keep the machine "Re-Sellable"

Is it going to be fast enough to render 50Billion polygon proccessing points for 3D mapping? ( will snow leopard help this out with this system?)

So many questions.. Guys at the apple store don't know half what the people here know.. thanks again

Cory, Owner
vogelhaus design
www.vogelha.us
 
Investment?

Cory,

A computer is a tool for your work, it is not a capital "investment" that will appreciate. The ability to work now is probably more important than how much $ it will "depreciate" when a new model is introduced.

You casually talk about dropping $20-$30k on a system that you could piece together yourself for $6000 buy buying HD, ram and displays from a source other than Apple. If you want to be financially prudent, do not pay Apple 2-10X market rate for ram, discs or displays.

First, there are other manufacturer who produce superior displays to the Apple models, especially when it come sto accurately presenting wider color gamuts. Check out Dell, Mitsubishi, and NEC for starters, all offer options priced at 50% of Apple comparables with stronger technical specs. I went with 30" Dell refurbs for $750 each.

Ram should be purchased from OWC or TransIntl, or the like, it will save you $8000 for 32GB ($1200 vs $9100 from Apple).

HD can be bought from newegg, and installed in an external RAID array. I just built a 3TB Raid 5 array for $600 with controller card, enclosure and WD drives (figure $2500+ for the same from Apple). Further this array can be moved to whatever new mac you have in 2010, preserving your data and workflow.

So, by buying smart we just built the SAME system you wanted, but saved you $10k. After my commission ;) , that still leaves you $9k with which you can build an EXTRA workstation or start building that rendering farm.

I am sure that I and others could give you a list of items to buy and you could perform the upgrades in a day (learning a lot about your system in the process), or hire someone for $300 to get it done for you.

You should be spending more time on this
 
vogelhausdesign said:
Ok.. so if you were me lets plan this out. And again , thanks to all of your help guys, really.. I appreciate it. If any of you need any design work done I swear I'll discount the hell out of it. Just visit my site! Because this is really helping me get my computer situation in order ( sorry for stealing the attention of the thread !! )


OK SO:

If I buy now.. I can sell it for a good price later, my ration is their will be a few problems and maybe buying on release date is a bad idea anyways, so it may be about a year before that machine is stable enough for me to sink a large amount of money into.


As far as a monitor.. for as much as I know about everything in the world.. lol I know not about monitors.. I use my cintiq for color matching so i've never really needed a "graphic design" monitor.
What can I get thats better than a 30" Cinema Display? for the same or less..

What graphic card should I get, if I decide to go with the current system? ( Price doesnt matter, but I may need 2 or more so..)

Is 8gigs of ram going to last me a while?

What can I do to improve the current system that will keep the machine "Re-Sellable"

Is it going to be fast enough to render 50Billion polygon proccessing points for 3D mapping? ( will snow leopard help this out with this system?)

So many questions.. Guys at the apple store don't know half what the people here know.. thanks again

Cory, Owner
vogelhaus design
www.vogelha.us
Click to expand...

You could save a s*it buying RAM from Transintl. I've bought 16gb of RAM from them and its exactly if not better than Apple's spec'd RAM with no ECC errors of any kind and the heat sinks on being even thicker.

Anyway you could get 16gb of RAM for the current Mac Pro that only costs $343 right now or 32GB of RAM for $1000. That right there should save you a *hit load of money off the bat compared to going RAM from Apple.

As for a GPU if you really need the absolute best, you should opt for the Nvidia Quadro FX 5600.

Also buy your 1TB HDDs from other places other than Apple. Apple charges $300 while you can get a 1.5TB HDD for $129.99 at places like newegg.com or amazon.com.

Basically I think if you can budget everything you need right now, you can spend just 1/3 of what you were willing to shell out from the beginning and by 5-6 months later you can sell the current stuff and lose a little bit and combine with the rest of the money that you saved to buy the newer upgraded Mac Pro (after reading about its speed improvements of course and if it is that much worth it to you).
 
twig16 said:
Cory,

A computer is a tool for your work, it is not a capital "investment" that will appreciate. The ability to work now is probably more important than how much $ it will "depreciate" when a new model is introduced.

You casually talk about dropping $20-$30k on a system that you could piece together yourself for $6000 buy buying HD, ram and displays from a source other than Apple. If you want to be financially prudent, do not pay Apple 2-10X market rate for ram, discs or displays.

First, there are other manufacturer who produce superior displays to the Apple models, especially when it come sto accurately presenting wider color gamuts. Check out Dell, Mitsubishi, and NEC for starters, all offer options priced at 50% of Apple comparables with stronger technical specs. I went with 30" Dell refurbs for $750 each.

Ram should be purchased from OWC or TransIntl, or the like, it will save you $8000 for 32GB ($1200 vs $9100 from Apple).

HD can be bought from newegg, and installed in an external RAID array. I just built a 3TB Raid 5 array for $600 with controller card, enclosure and WD drives (figure $2500+ for the same from Apple). Further this array can be moved to whatever new mac you have in 2010, preserving your data and workflow.

So, by buying smart we just built the SAME system you wanted, but saved you $10k. After my commission ;) , that still leaves you $9k with which you can build an EXTRA workstation or start building that rendering farm.

I am sure that I and others could give you a list of items to buy and you could perform the upgrades in a day (learning a lot about your system in the process), or hire someone for $300 to get it done for you.

You should be spending more time on this
Click to expand...

I agree completely, but my situation at some times is that I have to meet a clients needs at a moments notice. In which case buying from newegg and having over-night delivery, setting up installing maya , zbrush, C4D, Bryce, CS4 then doing a 20 minute animation at full rendering potential, is more of a headache than just spending the mark-up from apple and having it installed and ready to go when I order it. ( Which is my current situation )

We have a yearly budget for hardware that hasn't been spent in 2 years. SO , maybe you're right . maybe I hunt around for pieces parts and build a system, save some money and then maybe add more power to my render farm ( which is nearing death from repeated high temperature rapings. )

All of you have helped me very much. I thank you kindly.

If anyone has any more thoughts or suggestions, please let me know. If it's crowding too much of the thread, please feel free to send me a PM.

Cory, Owner
vogelhaus design
www.vogelha.us
 
vogelhausdesign said:
If anyone has any more thoughts or suggestions, please let me know. If it's crowding too much of the thread, please feel free to send me a PM.

Cory, Owner
vogelhaus design
www.vogelha.us
Click to expand...

I'm glad that we could help. They're all correct: NEVER buy HDDs or RAM from Apple. :)

I second the motion to move further discussion to PMs or a new thread. ;)

Oh, Cory, helpful hint: We're not allowed to have signatures in the post content itself, so at the top bar within the MacRumors:Forums page, right underneath the forum logo, it says "User CP". You can assign your contact information to your signature in there, and that saves you typing it out every time (or copy-pasting, which is most likely what you're using). :cool:
 
vogelhausdesign said:
I agree completely, but my situation at some times is that I have to meet a clients needs at a moments notice. In which case buying from newegg and having over-night delivery, setting up installing maya , zbrush, C4D, Bryce, CS4 then doing a 20 minute animation at full rendering potential, is more of a headache than just spending the mark-up from apple and having it installed and ready to go when I order it.
Click to expand...

Corey -- it takes maybe 3 minutes to install a new drive in a Mac Pro if you're used to doing it, and maybe 5 if you're not. Pop the side panel, pull out the carrier for the bay you want to use, screw in the drive using the screws already in the carrier, slide it back in, close the side panel, done. I'm pretty sure that if I had to do it in a minute, on a bet, I could. And I'd hardly be the only one who could. It's seriously easy. You do need a Phillips screwdriver. Then you have to initialize it, but that's no big deal.

Installing new memory is maybe a little more formidable, but not by much. If you've figured out ahead of time which slots to use, there's not much to it.

And you could order your drives and memory before you order the Mac Pro; it would all be there ready to assemble.

There's a lot to like about the Mac Pro chassis, and I say this as a person who's groped the innards of a lot of boxes, from PDP-11s to full tower PCs and a lot in between. Doing stuff to a Mac Pro is totally cake.
 
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