The Mac Pro is incredible!

[GoKyu]

Being a recent convert to the Mac (as of mid-January), and previous to that a diehard PC user, I couldn't imagine how efficient OS X was, and how incredibly powerful this new Mac Pro is...8 cores? I never thought I'd ever use all eight cores simultaneously like this.

These stats include me running: Photoshop, Lightroom, playing a DVD, encoding a separate DVD with Handbrake, Firefox with 8 tabs, Adium, Yahoo Messenger, VLC, Time Machine backup, GarageSale, and to top it off, I've been running Folding@Home continually since the last time I rebooted (Team MacRumors! )

With all that, the Mac Pro is still zippy, absolutely NO slowdown..and look how much RAM I still have...here are the stats:



All I have to say is.....this machine is a beast, and I could never be happy using an inefficient OS like Windows again

-Bryan

 

[eyecool]

Being a recent convert to the Mac (as of mid-January), and previous to that a diehard PC user, I couldn't imagine how efficient OS X was, and how incredibly powerful this new Mac Pro is...8 cores? I never thought I'd ever use all eight cores simultaneously like this.

Same here, but I started with a mac book last summer and added the mac pro in January. I have 10 GB too. 2x1GB stock + 4x2GB OWC. I was in the "waiting on my 8800GT, January order" crowd. I still really like my mac book, a lot. Thats where I saw OS X shine. I was very demanding on my windows desktop. Now that I've moved it to the side an am weened off, I've become very demanding on the mac pro. The transition hasn't been issue free, but it has been worth it. Stock 500GB + 1 TB F1 hard drive. I've got this coolmax hard drive adapter and have been sucking the data off of a dozen old windows hard drives. iTunes is approaching 200GB. iPhoto Library is 19GB. iMovie is 67Gb.

I've spent a ton on Apple in the past 15 months, having first bought my wife an intel iMac Christmas '06. Since then it's been iPhones, fresh iPods, the mac book and mac pro. Throw in a 1 TB Time Capsule on top of my existing Airport Extreme and it all added up quick. The printer, a massive amount of ram, hd and a big ass APC.

The next round of upgrades has me feeling like I've got a noose around my neck, but I need to man up and get:
A widescreen monitor to replace my old 17" + 15" dual viewsonic set up.
One of the Adobe software suites.
Aperture 2 for my wife's pictures. Her iPhoto Library is a lot bigger than mine.
Possibly Office 2008.

One of my main gripes on the mac pro is that I installed Parallels off of the boot camp installation, per boot camp and parallels instructions. It causes stability issues I don't have on my mac book that has parallels running as a stand alone installation. That has kept me from using windows. If I need anything, I hop on the old XPS that now sits in the corner.

What kind of monitor(s) are you using?

 

[jjahshik32]

Congrats man and welcome to the better brighter side of !!

I first switched from pc (dells & sony) to the powerbook g4 17" last gen 1.67ghz I believe in 2005 and I loved that powerbook. Then around that time there was a rumor that apple will switch to intel and then I sold that 17" and jumped onto the 1.8GHZ core duo mbp. Then sold that jumped to the 2.4GHZ mbp Sr model that I'm currently typing on and then I bought the first gen mac pro 2.66ghz with 7gb ram and x1900 ati card.

I sold the 2.66ghz mac pro last year for a good price and thought I could handle everything I do on a mbp, but it just wasnt the same. So in January they released the harpertown and that just pushed me more to wanting the powerful desktop again and bought the 2.8ghz mac pro, 16gb ram, with the HD 2600 card but I ordered the 8800gt card separately which was shipped yesterday and will receive it later today! =D

I will never take granted for the mac pro (desktops) again... its just too much of a power difference between the xeons and core 2 duo laptops! I love my mbp but especially love the mac pro!!

 

[GoKyu]

What kind of monitor(s) are you using?

That's in my sig as well... Samsung 245BW 24" widescreen....love it

What is everyone buying the 8800GT card for? As much as I use Photoshop, I really don't need more than 256 megs of video memory...I don't think I'd ever notice or fully utilize 512 unless I was doing some sort of hardcore video editing.

I'm not really much of a gamer anymore either (well, I never was a "gamer" to begin with....I mainly enjoy playing arcade games, easily done through MAME on PC, and also now on Mac), so that's another strike against the 8800GT for me.

-Bryan

 

[krye]

What is everyone buying the 8800GT card for? As much as I use Photoshop, I really don't need more than 256 megs of video memory...I don't think I'd ever notice or fully utilize 512 unless I was doing some sort of hardcore video editing.

I'm not really much of a gamer anymore either (well, I never was a "gamer" to begin with....I mainly enjoy playing arcade games, easily done through MAME on PC, and also now on Mac), so that's another strike against the 8800GT for me.

-Bryan

I plan to use the card for things such as Aperture and HD home movie editing in iMovie. I'm not much into gaming but I know I have a good card if I was to get into it. I also want to get into some 3D graphics stuff. Since the card is an order-of-magnitude better than the ATI option, it seemed like a no-brainer for only $200 more.

 

[Soop53]

Typing this on my daughter's Dell laptop makes me realize why I switched back to the Mac.

I am on vacation in Connecticut and could not bring my Pro with me. I thought I would jump on her laptop while it was on. It is only a year old and it already has a popup telling her the battery has reached its useful life. Give me a break.

I think I will fire up my old PB G3 that I brought along to keep me sane until I get back on my beast.

...I also love my Samsung 245BW!!! To me, it was the best bang for the buck!