Upgrading to a Mac Pro Help needed

[tng]

I have been a reader of these forums for years, but this is the first time I have asked for information because I'm about to make a big apple purchase and advice has been all over the board with the new mac pros.

The history:
When I started our company a few years ago we had a very tight budget and bought a iMac G5 for our day to day work...

What we do:
We use our G5 for Logic (our recording studio) and Final Cut Pro (for TV and wedding videos) It has worked great for us until a few weeks ago we started having problems when we bought the new logic 8 (not enough memory etc etc)

We will be using 3 programs on the system:

Logic Pro
Final Cut
Photoshop

Our recording hardware is a Mackie Onyx 400F and we have 12 firewire and USB hard drives (not all plugged in at once).

Our Budget:
I would like to spend no more then $3,500, but would of course like to spend less.

Questions:

We are looking for a Mac Pro, but want to know what processor to get with the type of software we use... some suggest getting a 2008?

Is 8 gigs vs 16 gigs vs 32 gigs a huge difference (noting we only have 1.5gig on the imac)?

Should we wait say 3 months (wedding season) to see if anything happens with the Pros, like price / new chips etc, or are we not expecting anything?

Thanks for your help,

 

[Tallest Skil]

Should we wait say 3 months (wedding season) to see if anything happens with the Pros, like price / new chips etc, or are we not expecting anything?

Nothing will happen for about a year to the hardware.

Snow Leopard will be out in a few months. It is up to you whether you would lose more money buying the computer now and the OS later or in not getting jobs done waiting for the OS.

 

[tng]

Is Snow Leopard going to make big difference in the programs I use? From what I hear its going to help the OS use more processing power and that will make the OS run faster, but the OS is not slow now its logic and final cut will snow leopard help them run faster?

 

[Jouhne]

For what you do, I'll take a Mac Pro Quad 2,66 with 6GB RAM
Be sure that Logic is fully compatible with the new Nehalem.
From now on, Apple will optimize their Pro Apps for Nehalem... Particulary Final Cut.
Also you will need to find an adaptor for your firewire 400 drives.
Oh since you've got your own company, do yourself a favor and take an Applecare.
And with the rest of the money left, take a good display
Ps : The Apple 24" LED Display is cover by the Applecare when you buy a Mac+display.
Ahhh 3 years of serenity

 

[tng]

But sure that Logic is fully compatible with the new Nehalem

What does that mean? That's what I keep hearing from people when I say I'm going to get a new pro... does it mean its going to be slow or not work at all or something else?

 

[Jouhne]

What does that mean? That's what I keep hearing from people when I say I'm going to get a new pro... does it mean its going to be slow or not work at all or something else?

Well for the moment it seems that there is some compatibility problems with Pro Tools, I don't know about Logic.
The best place to be sure about it is here.

 

[topgun072003]

From what I heard Pro Tools is having some problems with stacking plug-ins because of the hyper-threading. Logic is running, but not 100% with the new MP's.

 

[josh2007]

Not to be derailing your purchase plans, but I'm running Logic 8 on both my MBP 2.53 4gig and iMac 2.66 4gig.

I use tons of softsynths and plugs, and the CPU doesn't even break a sweat.

I can't speak for the other programs you run, but you could get the iMac and have cash left over for some cool other stuff