I’m going to sell my old G5 to my friend so I’m about to make a crazy huge purchase on a new Mac pro. I was hoping someone could help me decide which of the following machines would be the better way to go.
Refurbished Apple Mac Pro Quad Xeon 2.66Ghz $2,679.00
Two 2.66Ghz Dual-Core Intel Xeon processors
4GB RAM(4x1GB)
250GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s 7200 rpm hard drive
16x SuperDrive (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT graphics with 256MB memory
or
Refurbished Mac Pro Quad 3.0GHz Intel Xeon $3,299.00
Two 3.0GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon processors
2GB (4 x 512MB) memory (667MHz DDR2 fully-buffered DIMM ECC)
250GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s 7200 rpm hard drive
16x SuperDrive (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
ATI Radeon X1900 XT with 512MB memory
Do you think the second one is just complete overkill? The programs I use most are Maya, ZBrush, PhotoShop, Unity of course, and hopefully some PC games on my new intel Mac. I’m Just looking for some advise on what other people might think is the better deal. I’m going to be paying for this forever but I think it’s worth it.
It’s not much more money for a big boost in processor and GPU. The extra ram on the first one is nice, but you could easily buy more later if you need it.
Depending on how easy it is to get a better gfx card (obvious bottleneck in the first one) i would go for the first one if i must. If i had a choice beside of these i wouldn’t buy a mac pro unless they’ve replaced the xeons with the core architecture, just too much power consumption in my opinion.
I don’t sugest the X1900 XT it overheats and has to be replaced around 6 months after purchase. I just took my Mac Pro to the shop and had them order me the new card through Apple Care. They might have the card in a week or so (l live outside of the U.S.).
If you do go for the one with the X1900 XT make sure to get Apple Care so you can have the card replaced as many times as you need. -Jeff
I think it has more to do with the Mac drivers for the card, they don’t spin the cards fan fast enough. A suggestion if you do have this card is to use SMCFanControl to spin your PCIe/HDD intake fan at 3x the normal RPM (1500 instead of 500). This should help keep the card cooler and might help the card last longer.
There are also rumors that a second rev of the card was released that fixed this problem but I don’t really know if this is the case or not. I’m going to run SMCFanControl all the time when I get my new card and in 6 months to a year I should know if the above rumors are true. - Jeff
P.S. I agree with taumel though, Apple is an idiot when it comes to providing GPUs. The X1900 XT upgrade kit goes for as much as ATI and Nvidias current top of the line cards (which are far superior).
Hmm i’ve read in two articles that some pros have problems getting all the heat out but it wasn’t explained what the cause was, so a fan also could be a problem. I don’t know but i just would generally stay away from anything which consumes so much power as it will always genrate heat and until you don’t need all the power it just doesn’t make sense nowadays. The usual CoreDuos are just so fast that i would prefer going with the iMac next month and take the likely to be included new nVIDIA card with me.
Although my wish still would be a new cube or at least an upgraded (gfx side and core duo) mini. :O)
Going from a G5 to the Mac Pro the power consumption and heat generation of the Mac Pro seem trivial. But you do have a point.
Other than the GPU problem I have really enjoyed my Mac Pro, its a great machine for Unity and Maya! Good luck making the right decision Garen! - Jeff
–(Edit)–
Back when people were doing speed and price comparisons on Mac Pros the difference between the 2.66 and the 3.0 Ghz models was really quite small compared to the price difference (not the case with the 2.66 and the one that was below it). So they suggested getting a 2.66 and investing the difference on RAM.
So I would suggest the first option, and you can always change the GUP for something better when they release more options for the Mac Pro. Besides it comes with twice the ram from get go, and it is cheaper.
either one should handle pshop, unity or maya just fine. for zbrush, ram is king and it doesn’t care much about gpu. either way i want both of those machines
