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The Mac 8 core is shipping


Woody Campbell

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This info is not helpful. I finally paused in the incessant pursuit of Leica lenses and now Mac finally comes around with dual quads, 4 hard drive bays, endless memory, 2 optical drives and graphic cards forever, C'mon, give us a break. I'm too old for this.

BW

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Guest sirvine

Tried configuring one of these monsters? It proves my theory that the perfect workstation always costs $15,000, and that's been true since the late eighties.

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Guest sirvine

When you configure, don't buy RAM from Apple. (Unless there's something unique to these new RAM chips that makes third party options unfavorable.) Apple's BTO RAM has a HUGE markup.

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I buy RAM from Crucial.com but if you get the MacPro 1 GB from apple you get 512s which are potenial throw aways. But more I was trying to post an example of what you get for $5K as opposed to the aforementioned $15K.

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Tried configuring one of these monsters? It proves my theory that the perfect workstation always costs $15,000, and that's been true since the late eighties.

 

Even pricing a HP or Dell workstation with dual processor quard core Xeons and these specs and you get about the same price.

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Guest sirvine

I'm not Apple bashing--actually, was sort of joking about the 15K price point. If I were buying a Mac Pro tomorrow, it would be $7,671.00:

 

# Two 3.0GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon

# 1GB (2 x 512MB)

# 750GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s

# 750GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s

# 750GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s

# 750GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s

# NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256MB (single-link DVI/dual-link DVI)

# Apple Cinema HD Display (30" flat panel)

# One 16x SuperDrive

# Both Bluetooth 2.0+EDR and AirPort Extreme

# Apple Keyboard and Mighty Mouse - U.S. English

# Mac OS X - U.S. English

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Guest guy_mancuso

Sol you want Ram more than anything. Mac's are Ram hungry. PS is a RAM hungry program. I have a Mac Pro with Dual core with 6gbs of ram , 2 WD raptors spining at 10k each running Raid Zero and it just does not get much faster than this even running under Rosetta but CS3 beta is running extremely fast . I can open many high res. images at once and work on them. i would spend more money on Ram and less on processor speed if you mainly use it for photography. The high end processor speed is more recommended for 3d, Cad , Video Editing type work. Also if you want to save some money buy the 2,3,4, hard drives yourself, your probably paying about 400 dollars ro so to much buying them through Apple and you may not be getting the best 500 gb drive. Also Ram Apple is very high here . Read this site for more info but you can save a lot of money and add more to it if you did some of it yourself.

 

http://www.barefeats.com/quad09.html

 

http://www.macfixit.com/index.php

 

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

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Guest guy_mancuso

Look at a 750gb hard drive

 

750GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATA II 7200RPM 16MB Buffer W/ Perpendicular Drive Technology. New w/5 Year Seagate Warranty! (SEAST3750640AS) $269.99

 

Apple wants 500 for the same drive or similar and your not sure which drive you will get . Multiply that savings by 3 and you can get more RAM

 

Just some idea's

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Guest sirvine

Guy,

 

I always buy third party RAM for macs, since Apple's built to order pricing is unrealistic (to say the least). That's why I specc'ed it for only 1GB or whatever the minimum is. Trust me, I'd have at least 5 GB in that kind of machine, probably closer to 16.

 

Also, I know I'm overpaying for the HD's on apple's BTO option, but I can't tell from their website whether there is any problem with using third party drives internally. If you look at the interior pictures, Apple has some kind of casing on each internal drive. This is probably like the casing they use on the old PowerMacs (like the one I have), which just accepts any SATA drive and makes plugging/unplugging easier. If so, then I agree with you--buy the minimum HDD from Apple and then load up on Seagate drives from NewEgg or somewhere cheap.

 

Now, if you ask me, this workstation is overkill for amateur photographers. I have zero speed issues on my "old" PowerMac Dual 2.3 G5 when using Lightroom, Photoshop, etc. The speed bottlenecks are all the external devices (card reader, writing to external drives, printing, etc.) I'm all for bludgeoning every task with the thermonuclear technical solution, but unless you're dealing with 600MB DMF files and are hooked up to a 3+ TB XRAID and are doing heavy volume post-processing, printing, layout, etc. all at once, this is overkill. This box is for the audio/video guys who wouldn't even be able to get started on my crummy little workstation. When you compare what I do to what HD video pros do, my workstation needs are a mere trifle.

 

BTW, I've been an Apple freak since day one. Just for fun, I keep an original 128K mac, a Powerbook 2400c, a Newton, an eMate (!), a MacBook and PB G5--all in perfect working order!

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just an FYI. the latest 8core update from apple uses a 3ghz Intel Xenon (Clovertown) quad core processor, that no other computer company is using right now.

 

so it is literally the fastest, most cutting edge in its class at the moment.....just in case you needed some incentive to buy :)

 

/a

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Guest guy_mancuso

Okay Sol glad you had the Ram part figured out. I just looked at that config and thought i would add my input. On the hard drives there is no difference so buy at will there . I think you just want to be sure the Sata 3gb style is what you want. i would honestly do the hard drives yourself just because they throw in whatever is in stock and you can do much better performance wise and price also. When the first Mac Pro came out there were some issues with 3rd party ram but i think things have settled down on the heat sink issue. OTO seems pretty safe to buy from. I agree most of this is overkill but man is it fun to fly on these bad boys. LOL

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Thank you for this discussion; I don't want to buy too much computer when I upgrade. My old G3 needs replacement, and I plan to try to wait until the new OS is available. From what I can tell, my old 23 inch cinema display won't work with the new computers, so that too adds to the final cost.

 

Bob Pierce

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I'd definitely get HD's from another source like OWC (macsales.com) a 500 GB is $139 a 750 GB is 349. I only put one in my build since I have 3 or 4 500 GB SATA drives and a few smaller ones. I'm an apple consulant so I can get $800 off a $4000 order. This is tempting, time to sell my PowerMac and get this for CS3 Premium!

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To the best of my knowledge there was one. That is how they discovered it was a bad idea. :eek:

 

Nope, never was released, they never got the G5 small enough, only iMacs and PowerMacs had G5 processors.

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