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What to get for my mac pro?

M

Macpropro80

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 31, 2009
408
0
Hey everyone.

My dad offered to buy me any one part for my mac pro set up as long as its under $360.

Edit: 2008 Mac pro BTW

I can't decide between 3 different things:

1) 8 more gigs of ram (4 Gigs x2) from mac sales.

2) Ati 4780 graphic card

3) Wacom intuos 6x8 tablet.

I do video editing that requires alot of speed. (at 4PM I have to import 3 hours of video, edit it into 3 different projects, export them all and burn 5 copies of each project and get them out the door by 8PM the same day.)

I have 4 gigs now and they seem pretty good but More is always better.

I also like COD4 and my dual 2600s don't play it well. So an upgrade would be nice. But im worried that it won't make my computer faster interms of import and export speeds when editing.

I want the wacom tablet because I want a wacom tablet. no real reason other then it will be cool to draw on the computer. :)

Will my mac pro play nice with four 1 gig ram chips, and two 4 gig chips?
 
Macpropro80 said:
Hey everyone.

My dad offered to buy me any one part for my mac pro set up as long as its under $360.

Edit: 2008 Mac pro BTW

I can't decide between 3 different things:

1) 8 more gigs of ram (4 Gigs x2) from mac sales.

2) Ati 4780 graphic card

3) Wacom intuos 6x8 tablet.

I do video editing that requires alot of speed. (at 4PM I have to import 3 hours of video, edit it into 3 different projects, export them all and burn 5 copies of each project and get them out the door by 8PM the same day.)

I have 4 gigs now and they seem pretty good but More is always better.

I also like COD4 and my dual 2600s don't play it well. So an upgrade would be nice. But im worried that it won't make my computer faster interms of import and export speeds when editing.

I want the wacom tablet because I want a wacom tablet. no real reason other then it will be cool to draw on the computer. :)

Will my mac pro play nice with four 1 gig ram chips, and two 4 gig chips?
Click to expand...

I do video editing. I find that I need 8GB quite often with lot of other appliations open. Go for the memory.

You want to install in sets of four matched boards. I have 4 x 4gb of Ram and I'm very happy with it. I rarely use more than 8GB though, I hit 12GB once perhaps. I expect Snow Leopard to more effectively utilize memory though.

It is cheaper to buy smaller size boards. And you have space for it.

But the price just dropped for memory. Check out OWC

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/Mac-Pro-Memory

If you buy four 1 GB Boards, the cost is: $137.95 at OWC that will give you 8GB, but no room for more later.

Or you can ask your dad if you can get 4x4GB of Ram for $489.99 and then sell the 4GB you have now for $100 on eBay and you will have 16GB of memory set up for the fastest possible memory access. List it for $90 on eBay and you are good to go.

That will give you 16GB of memory in the fastest memory configutation--four matched memory boards--good for an extra 10% in speed. And it will only cost you $390.
 
I tried a Wacom tablet just for the sake of trying it and it turn out that I didn't like it and it didn't feel natural. Then again I don't draw and it didn't make it easy for me to draw masks in after effects, so i ended up returning it. If you really want to try one, get a Wacom Bamboo (not the "fun") its only $60 and you can at least see if it's something you could use.

For $360, I would do a combination of more ram and probably 2x 1TB drive that you can set up in a raid 0 for faster IO while you edit video. Though a 4870 would be cool, I think business is business and probably should take care of that first.

as for the ram, I'm sure it will work just fine but your going to get a hair slower because of the configuration of it and 4GB sticks are still expensive. Depending on how much ram your using now (by "using" i mean are you filling up 4GB not how much is in your machine). I think the 2GB per stick range is probably the best bang for your buck right now.
 
Dunno if you'd really need the Wacom, but from experience I think it's absolutely worth every penny if you use much Photoshop. Then again, I'm in art school for illustration so I do have a certain point of view on the matter.
 
NRose8989 said:
I tried a Wacom tablet just for the sake of trying it and it turn out that I didn't like it and it didn't feel natural. Then again I don't draw and it didn't make it easy for me to draw masks in after effects, so i ended up returning it. If you really want to try one, get a Wacom Bamboo (not the "fun") its only $60 and you can at least see if it's something you could use.

For $360, I would do a combination of more ram and probably 2x 1TB drive that you can set up in a raid 0 for faster IO while you edit video. Though a 4870 would be cool, I think business is business and probably should take care of that first.

as for the ram, I'm sure it will work just fine but your going to get a hair slower because of the configuration of it and 4GB sticks are still expensive. Depending on how much ram your using now (by "using" i mean are you filling up 4GB not how much is in your machine). I think the 2GB per stick range is probably the best bang for your buck right now.
Click to expand...


He won't let me get two things, idk why thats just how he is. Also I don't need more hard drive space, I have 1TB on raid 0 via firewire 800.

And I guess if i really wanted to I could just remove those 2 disks from the external case and put them in my mac pro, then hotwire the raid.
(this actually works I took the dvd drive out of a sony external usb dvd drive, and put it in my linux box so I could boot off it. then I used the USB chip thing, and made my own USB hard drive by combining an old hard drive and the usb chip i took from the Dvd drive.) Just a little story :)
 
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